I had so much fun doing research for the AL Cy Young post that I decided to do a similar post for the AL MVP. I’m not going to break down the 2010 ballot though because, for the most part, the voters actually got it right. I think Shin-Soo Choo (5.6 fWAR, 8th in the league) should have finished much higher than 14th, and I certainly don’t think Delmon Young should have finished in the top ten (2.1 fWAR, mostly due to his horrible defense: -9.7 UZR). Every other pick is pretty defensible; actually, the MVP ballot matches up pretty nicely with the season’s WAR leaders. Yeah, Thanksgiving was a couple of days ago, but this kind of progress is something to be thankful for indeed. In fact, it’s interesting to see how much things have changed in terms of awards voting in just the past few years. Though I occasionally make some snarky comments, I didn’t write these posts to dump on the voters in the past; that would be like savaging our ancestors for failing to use antibiotics to treat deadly illnesses like typhoid. They didn’t have access to technology that would allow them to watch any game at any time anywhere in the country, nor did they have the vast amounts of statistical information that we have available today. They made the best decisions they could with the information they had available, and with some exceptions, they did a pretty good job.

What’s more interesting to me is that our view of what makes a ballplayer great hasn’t changed all that much over the years; we still value things like speed, and power, and defense, that fans and front offices have always placed a premium on. It’s that our methods of evaluating these things have drastically changed. (more…)