Utley and Co. kept that team alive while Howard was Howard was OBPing .310 for the first three months of the season. Had he been hitting back then, maybe the team wouldn’t have needed to be carried.

But I forget, those games don’t count.

so Howard was probably as fresh in their minds as that turkey sub they had for lunch.

He’s just smart enough to know that September is “triple points month” for most of the BBWAA voters. That .352 average? It was really 1.056. 11 HRs? Actually 33. And so on. With numbers like that, how can you resist voting for him?

I’m trying to find one single way in which Prince Fielder was better than Albert Pujols.

Hardricourt is blowing my mind right now. If you’re going to be lazy and put Howard at No. 1, fine I guess, but putting Pujols at No. 7 means that you absolutely, without doubt, do not know anything about baseball and should have all voting privileges taken away immediately.

I understand that the Cardinals would not have been even close to the wild-card berth without Pujols, but I still like players who elevate their game in crunch time and lift their teams to new heights. And I thought Ryan Ludwick had just as much to do with keeping the Cards in the hunt as Pujols did. St. Louis did stay in the wild card race until mid-September, but mainly because the Brewers and Mets were gagging at the time.

If the Mets and Brewers hadn’t “gagged” then Howard’s Phillies wouldn’t have seen the playoffs either.

Really? Prince Fielder? Wow…

I’m not trying to be one of the people who gets emotional and jumps all over you, but I would like to respectfully assert that your reasoning doesn’t have a single ounce of sense to it. Your reasoning for weighing September so heavily has been covered by many other posters already, so I’ll skip it. What I want to look at is how you’ve applied your method to vote for Delgado over Pujols.

Delgado had a wonderful .340/.400/.649 line with 8 homers in September. He dazzled, it’s true. The afterburners were ablaze. Over in St. Louis, during the same month, Pujols posted a .321/.427/.702 line. In less at-bats (thanks to walking more), he matched Delgado’s 8 homers. He had more RBIs. More doubles. He struck out only 1/3 as much. As bright as Delgado shined, Pujols shined brighter still.

And yet, Pujols wasn’t as high on your ballot. So: if you grade on the whole year, Pujols was obviously better. If you grade with a heavy weight on September…well, Pujols was still better. So what I’m saying here is: by voting for Delgado over Pujols, you have literally removed player performance from your equation. You no longer are considering how well a player actually played. You can’t say you are, because Pujols played better than Delgado in every month but July.

So why Delgado’s 4th-place vote? Well, we know the answer don’t we…the Mets pushed toward the playoffs (and failed), while the Cardinals sagged back into 4th place.

In other words, you quite literally based your MVP vote on everything about a player’s team EXCEPT that player. You put the Mets-sans-Delgado in 4th place and the Cardinals-sans-Pujols in 7th. Surely you can see that this is utter nonsense.

The vote is subjective, yes. But the reason the vote is subjective is because the writers are supposed to be the experts—the people who know how to watch the game, look at the numbers, and impart well-reasoned information to the fanbase. You are literally paid to understand the game and share your knowledge, the thing I do for fun. Your method of voting only shows that you have no idea how to do the job entrusted to you in the MVP voting process. You vote haphazardly, utilizing criteria that fail to reflect on the people competing for the award.

It is unfortunate for the fanbase that trusts you to impart their information. It is unfortunate for the game, which seeks to reward its deserving players with prestigious awards befitting of their talents, but has those awards rendered meaningless by failures of the people who give them. And it is unfortunate for the players, who are subject to the whims of your subjective "reasoning," unabashedly biased and statistically ignorant.

Our methods for understanding the game have grown by leaps and bounds. With our increased understanding of statistical application and technology, we can now even measure and document the break of every pitch thrown in every single game. Anybody can order TV packages and watch any team play every day. Anyone can see how any player performed in any of hundreds of situations—for free!—on the internet. Yet the MVP voting process lags behind, weighed down by the voters who refuse to step forward, to take their jobs seriously, and to really attempt to understand how and why they determine value other than to childishly assert, "I can vote however I want, it’s subjective."

It’s a damn shame.

so I won’t get TOO angry when Pedroia gets it.

I HATE THAT FUCKING DOUCHE IMP

1) All the games count, not just ones played in September. Howard very well could have torpedoed the Phillies season before it got off the ground if not for Utley’s hot start.

2) Pat Burrell was better than Ryan Howard this year.

3) Jason Werth would have been better had he been a regular for the entire year.

4) Without running any calculations, there’s a decent chance that Victorino and Rollins were better than him as well.

5) Ryan Howard was slightly below average at reaching base, he played horrible defense, isn’t a plus baserunner, (and even though I loathe using this as an argument against him) strikes out at an historic rate. If he’s posting a .438 wOBA* like in 2006, yeah he’s certainly in the discussion. However this year he was a slightly above average hitter for a first baseman, while playing terrible defense. That is not someone who should be mentioned as an MVP.

That’s not average.