This is one that I’ve been putting off as it seemed too obvious for an entry. No one in there right mind thinks in 1991 that Terry Pendleton was a better player than Barry Bonds except apparently the 12 baseball writers who voted for Pendleton over Bonds. Now Pendleton winning wasn’t on the level of Andre Dawson winning in 1987 and actually after reviewing it there certainly have been several worse choices for MVP in the past.
There’s an easy answer as to why Pendleton won the MVP and that
Since my 1991 Mariners entry was flushed and I doubt I’ll try to type it again anytime soon so I might as well do 1991 A.L. MVP redo which does feature a Mariner player being underrated by the voters. But the main reason this particular MVP was interesting is that it’s one of those cases with where player on a losing team won the award. Now in the 1987 N.L. MVP redo Andre Dawson was shown to be one of the worst choices ever, nevermind that he played on a last place team. For the 2003 A.L. MVP re
Vern/Culloden asked to do a redo on this one so I'll put off the 1995 A.L. MVP for another day. 1989 is kind of an interesting year to examine, and hey my favorite sporting year, as Robin Yount won the MVP which I can remember at the time being surprised. Ruben Sierra was the hot young superstar of the moment and he broke out with a great year at age 23 and I always figured he should have won it, without every actually looking to deeply into the issue.
When I'm trying to find an interesting
Hey look a reader request, Culloden Hastings writes:
Hey take away something from Kirk Gibson? No complaints from me.
Gibson winning the MVP in 1988 always seemed like an odd choice. It always appeared on the surface just to be your typical writer vote where the guy who is SCRAPPY~ or TOUGH~ or a LEADER~ gets more support than he deserves. Gibson's Dodgers have been romanticized by the L.A. media to the point that you'd think they were some dynasty rather than the complete fluke
There's an ongoing debate about the baseball Most Valuable Player voting: Should it go to the best player in baseball or should it go to the best player on a winning team? I used to be very much on the side of it should be the best player on a winnig team but I've backed off that, although today I still don't think a player on a last place team shouldn't be winning the MVP but don't believe that a player on a losing or middle of the road team should be automatically discarded from consideration.
Okay I've redone all the 80's MVPs but this was one that I kind of have been wanting to do an entry for. The main reason is because 1987 was the year that my favorite player of all-time Mark McGwire burst on to the scene by completely obliterating the rookie homerun record with 49 homeruns. It's really one of those records that it's hard to imagine it ever being broken as Mike Piazza's 35 in 1993 is the most by a rookie since. In the Summer of '87 everyone was going out of their way to buy up as
I think every sports fan has certain athletes they dislike or even on some level hate. Sometimes there are some justifiable reason to dislike the athlete and other times it is just irrational hate. For me that athlete is Roger Clemens. I can't stand the fat fuck. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense as Clemens has many memorable failures against my Oakland A's over the years. Clemens was 0-7 head-to-head vs. Dave Stewart when Stewart pitched for the A's. Hell you'd think I'd like the guy but I
In case you didn't know Dwight Gooden is currently behind bars in a seven month prison sentence after another drug relapse. Gooden has described his time in prison as torture and I have to imagine he can't be the happiest of guys right about now. But I'm here to cheer ol' Doc up and take a look back at the year he was on top of the baseball world and see if he should have won the MVP.
After phenomenal rookie year (17-9, 2.60 ERA) Gooden followed it up with one of the best years by a pitcher
As I've mentioned before I have several redos done that I've just never bothered to do entries on but after doing the Mattingly entry I figured it'd be a good time to do an entry on the year he won the MVP. Also had thought about doing it after last week's Jeff Bagwell debate that popped up in the MLB Offseason Thread, Part II. The poster who was truly against Bagwell as being a HOF was NYankees who while getting completely destroyed in the debate also tried to back up Mattingly's HOF case and m
In kkk's most recent entry on K-Mart customer service he made mention of how he had thought Harold Baines didn't get enough credit as a player. Now Baines best season was probably 1984 when he was still an everyday outfielder. Now he was never a serious MVP cadidate and '84 was no different but the MVP voting that year was quite interesting. For one a closer won it in Willie Hernandez of the Tigers. A closer winning an MVP should always raise a few eyebrows as it's pretty much impossible for the
I had been looking for an excuse to do an entry on one of the most bizarre years in baseball history and the A.L. MVP pick in 1981 was controversial so might as well do a redo. 1981 featured the strike to end all strikes, until the 1994 strike trumped it of course. The players went on strike on June 12th that year over free agent compensation and did not comeback until August 9th, losing 712 games in the process.
Now the owners decided to come up with an idea to drum up some interest back
One way to measure a player's value can be their ability to stay healthy. Obviously if a player can give at least average production for their position and stay in the line-up everyday their value might be higher than their statistics may indicate especially if their team lacks a suitable replacement. This can come up when considering someone for MVP. Some seasons there maybe a player who's peripheral numbers were superior to other candidates but they missed 30-40 games due to injury thus their
You know I really did want to avoid doing three straight entries of the same feature but dammit I'm loving doing this and this blog is basically my own playground to geek out on useless information so might as well keep doing what I love. Besides there's only two of you reading this.
The 1979 N.L. MVP vote had the most unique result ever: a tie. A TIE!?!? What kind of a crap is that? There's no ties in baseball! I was only one year old at the time but I imagine there must have been riots ac
All the talk on ESPN and the TWiB threads when it comes to the American League MVP award in 2006 is about Clutchie McClutchie of the Boston Red Sox being the MVP favorite. One debate that has creeped up again and will certainly be talked about as we get closer to the end of the season is whether or not a DH should win the MVP. In my 1995 A.L. MVP redo I showed that a DH should be able to win the MVP award. Well okay my original intention when doing the redo was to show the voter bias against Alb
You know I was going to do a "Steve Howe Memories" entry and just post the lyrics to "White Lines" but thought better of it.
I needed to do something to keep me from punching a wall thinking about the A's sinking $22 million Esteban Loaiza so might as well do a redo. I've been trying to find a year with a truly bad choice for MVP and with the best choice receiving little support and I'm kinda running out of examples in my lifetime so picked out an old one.
1974 was a historic year as H
Ya I'm really digging into the archives now. This one just stood out to me because Dick Groat won the MVP. Not Hank Aaron, not Willie Mays, but Dick Groat. For those who don't know Groat was a light hitting but excellent defensive shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He hit only 39 homeruns in his 14 year career with 2 of them coming in his MVP winning season. Now it certainly is possible for a non-power hitter to be a legit MVP candidate but probably only Ozzie Smith was good enough defensivel
This is a bit of a throw away entry but I had been wanting to rundown the 23 MVP redos I've done entries for. I have other redos that I've done (including the entire decade of the 80's) but haven't done entries for yet. What I decided to do is group the redos into categories in terms of how good or bad the choice was by the writers. Thought it would be a good time to do this after the writer's awful choice of Justin Morneau. I had Morneau 9th on my 2006 A.L. MVP mock ballot.
Writers Made th
Considering that my favorite team in sports was just eliminated on a walk off homerun, I feel pretty good. Going into today I just wanted the A's to pull out one win and then let the Tigers celebrate at home on Sunday as I didn't really want the A's to get my hopes up by winning both games this weekend. Well don't worry about having my heartbroken now. But this series was effectively over after the 4th inning in Game 2 when Esteban Loaiza failed to get a shutdown inning after a Milton Bradley ho
This week I spent five minutes working on the poll instead of the usual ten.
1. Texas
2. Alabama
3. Penn State
4. Oklahoma State
5. Oklahoma
6. Georgia
7. Florida
8. Utah
9. USC
10. Ohio State
11. LSU
12. TCU
13. Pittsburgh
14. Boise State
15. Texas Tech
16. Missouri
17. Georgia Tech
18. Boston College
19. Minnesota
20. South Florida
21. Northwestern
22. BYU
23. Florida State
24. Ball State
25. Tulsa
So I waited two weeks before doing my 2nd Pointless Top 25 because I wanted to do some hard research on all 119 I-A teams...or I just didn't feel like it last week. You make the call!
Again I spend about ten minutes doing this so don't bother spending more than ten seconds reading it.
1. Texas
2. Alabama
3. Penn State
4. Oklahoma State
5. Oklahoma
6. Georgia
7. Missouri
8. Florida
9. Utah
10. BYU
11. USC
12. LSU
13. Texas Tech
14. Virginia Tech
15. Ohio Sta
You've seen the rest, now you'll see...more of the rest. It's my own personal college football Top 25 that shouldn't be read by anyone. I did this for about a month last year before getting Bored with it and I expect the same this year.
We're not even halfway through the season but were already down to 13 BCS conference unbeatens and 18 total in Division I-A. My feeling is at this point if you are still undefeated I'm going to rank you, regardless of schedule and conference affiliation. Al
Okay this is the last of this to keep my sanity but I decided I might as well finish on a nice round number at 100. I'll be honest there are a few of my picks who I've never heard of the player as some selections have never produced a Pro Bowl player. So I went with guys who started a lot figuring they couldn't have sucked, plus getting a long term starter is very good value at this point in the draft. I had no idea the Dolphins drafted Joe Theismann.
61. Philadelphia – Brian Dawkins, S, Cl
I'm going to keep doing this until I start grasping at straws to find decent players to fill out every pick, which I had to do with at least one of the following picks. As I get further down the list the honorable mention picks become increasingly difficult. Again this is just since the merger and what the player did over the course of their career, not what they necessarily did for the team that drafted them which is plainly obvious with pick #33.
31. L.A. Rams – Nolan Cromwell, S, Kansas
If you haven't checked out Pro-Football-Reference.com lately you should as it isn't the completely useless site it used to be. This is a site that until recently didn't even have QB Ratings but now it has all kinds of neat features such as a searchable draft database. With the help of this I decided to do a quicky project for the blog by putting together an All-Time NFL Draft.
Now this isn't some all-time fantasy draft I'm doing but rather I'm selecting who in my opinion were the best play
Wow, two entries in one week? I'm gonna need an extended vacation after exhausting myself like this.
Next Sunday the All-Star Game reserves will be selected for this year's extra special, Yankee Stadium Circle Jerk All-Star Game presented by FOX. And hey it counts or something. I originally intended on picking my own All-Star team using all that stat geek crap I typically use but that was going to take longer than I wanted so instead I decided to make predictions for All-Star reserves prim
