The Archive

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Pitchers and MVP

If you polled MLB players on whether a pitcher should be eligible for the MVP award, what do you think the split between the opinions of pitchers and position players would be?

Perhaps a middle relief pitcher or two would not be dead set in his support for the idea of a pitcher winning the MVP, but it is difficult to see a starter admitting he should not be eligible for the award. I'm going to go 95-99% here, and 100% for starting pitchers.

It's less straight forward for position players. Perhaps former pitchers who were moved elsewhere might support the idea. Perhaps catchers, who work with pitchers more than any other player, would be more supportive of a pitcher winning MVP. Otherwise, it seems that there's not much to go on. There would probably be more "no opinion" answers among position players. But it could go without saying that position players are less likely than pitchers to think of pitchers as MVP-eligible.

These are pure hypotheticals (until ESPN or Sports Illustrated gets on it), but you can get an idea from Jayson Stark's article the other day about Justin Verlander. Pitcher Chris Carpenter says of course pitchers should be considered! Shortstop Jimmy Rollins, meanwhile, is dead set against it. (I'll refrain from suggesting that perhaps Rollins subconsciously feels Jake Peavy deserved the 2007 award over him and is compensating for that.)

This division would be hard to classify as unexpected. That said, it would be interesting to see some actual figures. Divide a poll into starters/closers, middle relievers, catchers, and positions 3-9 and see what comes out.

No comments: