There has long been a debate over what defines “value” as it pertains to the MVP award: The SABRmetrics community has argued that the award always seems to go to players with big RBI numbers regardless of their generally more-telling peripheral numbers; baseball purists get upset when someone who doesn’t lead their team to the playoffs gets crowned; and fans express outrage every time their local hero is “robbed” by a rival player.

Historically, these disputes have been over who should win the award, never over who should decide who should win the award.  Right now, it’s decided by the Baseball
Writers Association of America (BBWAA), and for years it has generally been accepted that they’re the right people for the job – maybe they’ll get the answer wrong, but they’re not going to lie about it.  Now, as the Ryan Howard v. Albert Pujols debate rages, that line of thinking is going out the window.

On one side is the pro-BBWAA side, which argues “if not us, who?” and point to Bobby Abreu’s gold glove as evidence that players and coaches don’t know their votes from a hole in the ground. On the other is the anti-BBWAA side, which believes that writers abuse their privileges and let personal feelings cloud their ability to be fair arbiters.

But before we get into all of that, let’s start at the beginning.

As expected, the 2008 NL MVP came down to two men: Ryan Howard and Albert Pujols.  Out of the 32 MVP voters, all but two placed both in their top 7. The two that didn’t, Mark
Zuckerman of the Washington Times (who ranked Howard 10th) and Rich Campbell of the Fredericksburg
(Va.) Free
Lance-Star (who now infamously left Howard off completely) were both beat writers for the Washington Nationals. In Philly, that raised some eyebrows.

There are several explanations to how this happened.  The first, of course, is coincidence.  Perhaps two voters independently thought less of Ryan Howard than their colleagues, and perhaps those two both happened to cover the Washington Nationals.

A second explanation could be that Ryan

Howard was awful against the Nationals this year. In his justification of the pick, Rich Campbell explained that covering every game one team plays means that you can’t see every other game.  He called this “a true obstacle in the voting process.”  It could be that the games he did see Howard play were awful — I’m not sure if I would agree with this logic, but it at least seems reasonable — if at the end of the season the writers who saw him play the best voted for him and the writers who saw him play the worst voted against presumably it would all even out.  Unfortunately it’s a moot point, as Howard’s line against DC (.284 / .342 /
.567) was far from awful and actually better than Pujols‘  (.182 / .471 /
.545).

The third option is that the voting was personal — that the Nationals’ writers voted against Howard for reasons that had little to do with his production.  As you consider this possibility it is worth noting that the
Nationals and the Phillies did not get along this season. Throughout the season they threw at each
other, emptied their bullpens, and almost brawled time after time after time. Campbell dismisses this point, he says that he’s not a fan of the team, but the Nationals voters were outliers, and I don’t consider it unreasonable to explore all possibilities as to why.

In response to these votes, Phillies columnist Phil Sheridan wrote that the
BBWAA’s voting right should be taken away (a point he has made in the
past).  Money quote:

Ryan Howard was the most valuable player in the National
League in 2008. That he was not voted MVP by the Baseball Writers’ Association
of America says more about the association than about Howard, Albert Pujols or America.

[snip]

Of the 32 MVP voters (two from each chapter, which means two
from each NL market), only one failed to put Howard on his ballot at all. Rich
Campbell of the Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star was
contacted by my astute colleague Todd Zolecki. He had no comment.

Howard’s next-lowest spot – 10th out of 10 – was on the
ballot of Mark Zuckerman of the Washington Times. Zuckerman and Campbell both
cover the Nationals. They both cast ballots utterly out of step with the norm,
at least regarding Howard. If that’s a coincidence, I’m Red Smith.

Rich Campbell then, a day later, had a return message for
Sheridan and the rest of his critics. He said, to be brief, that SABRmetrics
did not back up Ryan Howard’s candidacy. 
He also took some shots at the Philadelphia
writers:

It was my initial intent to decline public comment on
all inquiries regarding my decision to leave Philadelphia Phillies first
baseman Ryan Howard off my ballot for the National League most valuable player.
I simply don’t want to disparage Howard’s regular-season accomplishments and
contributions to Philadelphia’s
division championship. They were significant and should not be minimized.

But after some consideration and some extremely weak and hollow shots in
my direction, I’ll offer an explanation and provide some accountability that
this process truly deserves.

The ‘weak and hollow shots’ he describes are from the Phil Sheridan
article.

Yesterday,  I reached out to
Sheridan and Zolecki to see if they had a response.  Here’s Zolecki:

[L]ike I wrote in
today’s post, I just wish he had those explanations handy when I called him
Monday. But I definitely don’t have anything against the guy. And when I talked
with him again Tuesday, he was very nice and explained himself well. I just
thought it was a major oversight not to have Howard in his top 10. I still do.

Sheridan
was a little less cordial. I asked him about Campbell’s attack, Here is what he had to say:

The main point of my column was the inherent
problem with journalists voting on these awards when they are tied directly and
indirectly with what players earn. It is, as you noted, a point I’ve made
before and will almost certainly have to make again. The BBWAA would give up
Lite beer en masse sooner than it would give up the ego massage of controlling
the award and Hall of Fame voting.

I tried to use this MVP vote (and the Edinson
Volquez non-rookie votes) to illustrate the hole in the BBWAA’s lone (and
inadequate, I think) rationale — which is that the writers are best qualified
to get it right, as if that’s our concern. Messrs. Campbell and Zuckerman, the
two voters who cover the Nationals, also happened to be the two voters who had
Howard lowest on their ballots. They didn’t cost him the award, but that’s not
the point.

The key point there is that writers use these
ballots to further some agenda of their own. It happens a lot. The late Bill
Brown of the Delaware County Times famously left Mike Schmidt off his Hall of
Fame ballot, going so far as to write a column saying he didn’t like Schmidt
and didn’t want his election to be unanimous. There are anecdotes about writers
telling players they have MVP or CY Young votes in order to score interviews.

Leaving Howard off, in my opinion, is a deliberate
attempt to cost him points in what could be a close race. It isn’t an honest
vote — I have no issue with people who went 1. Pujols, 2. Howard, 3. Braun or
something along reasonable lines — it’s an attempt to negate someone else’s
vote.

Campbell no-commented Todd Zolecki yesterday, which was weaker
than anything I wrote. A day late (and a dollar-dog short), he comes out with a
long, seamheaded essay about why he left Howard off his ballot. It smacks to me
of an after-the-fact rationalization. Since 31 other BBWAA members had Howard
on their ballots, it also rings a bit hollow (to borrow a word).

While the writer-beef is intriguing, I think that it is best used as a bully pulpit needed to look at BBWAA’s role in the voting process.  Maybe Campbell is a d-bag, maybe he’s not, but considering that his vote couldn’t have changed the vote (if both writers had put Howard first, he still would have finished 2nd in the overall vote) means that that is besides the point. 

For all his attacks, Sheridan’s point isn’t that Campbell is a jerk – he correctly notes that neither Zolecki or himself suggested that Campbell’s vote was personal in print – but rather that it might have been, and that that displayed a flaw in the voting system that should be addressed now, before it costs someone the vote and in turn money in bonuses and arbitration hearings.  Virtually all major league contracts have ‘MVP bonuses’ and they aren’t just for show, on top of that the market for an All Star is different than it is for an MVP.  It isn’t a glib point to suggest that fucking with an MVP vote is fucking with an MVP candidate’s pocketbook.

As for the counter-argument that players and
coaches wouldn’t take the responsibility seriously, I have to believe that MVP
is a little more relevant to current players than, say, RF gold glove
winner.  There is a trade-off of course: Not only would the switch not take the subjectivity out of the vote but considering that pro athletes don’t always know the rules to the games they play, it would probably take things like VORP out of consideration as well. Still, if reporters are using their votes to grind their axes it may be a trade-off that is needed. 

I think, in the end, I agree with Sheridan that the BBWAA is a problem, but maybe not with his conclusion that the answer is to scrap the whole system.  I’d like to believe that there are smart, dedicated, honest baseball writers out there – can’t we find a way to get say, Roger Angell, Peter Gammons, Buster Olney, Jeff Passan, Joe Sheehan, Ken Tremendous and a half dozen others who I’m forgetting (and me, I should totally be there) in a room once a year to hash this all out?

*I reached out to Campbell this morning and have not yet heard back.  I’ll be sure to keep you up to date if/when he does.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under Inside the Press Box, Phillies, Ryan Howard, awards, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.