Why Kashmir is better than Magic Man (Also Baseball talk)

Earlier this week the MVP for both leagues were announced. No surprise to anyone (except apparently the two ultra-homer Tiger writers who voted for Magglio Ordonez) that Alex Rodriguez was voted MVP in the AL. The bigger surprise was that Jimmy Rollins won the tightly contested race between himself and Matt Holliday for NL MVP. I'll lay out the case for both:

1) Going into the postseason, both players were figured to be a lock if they lead their respective teams (Phillies for Rollins and Rockies for Holliday) into the postseason. Nobody expected both teams to make such drastic comebacks as they did, and both ended up in the postseason, so this point is relatively moot. Mind you, these votes were cast just before the postseason started, so the Rockies going further into the postseason had no bearing on the voting. Kinda like voting for best dinner, but counting dessert in, when the voting is supposed to be based on the strength of the entrée.

2) Both players were centerpieces for their team. Jimmy Rollins made a quote back in January, being laughed at by most of baseball, saying that the Phillies were the team to beat in the NL East. Rollins held his end of the bargain, and became the first player ever to do 30/20/35/40 (home runs, triples, doubles, stolen bases respectively,) and to do it as a Shortstop is even more impressive. Not to mention he won the Gold Glove on defense. Matt Holliday on the other hand lead the league in Batting Average, hits, doubles, RBIs, Extra Base hits, Total bases, babies kissed, calls to Grandma, and probably a number of other categories, not to mention being in the top 3 in everything else.

The stats may be a bit intimidating to the untrained eye, but in my mind it boils down to this: Which is more valuable; a person who has better stats at an easier position (Matt Holliday as a left fielder) or a person with slightly worse stats at a harder position (Jimmy Rollins, playing Gold Glove defense on shortstop?) The key here for the argument is this: Rollins became the first person to accomplish that line of 30/20/35, impressive, but those stats have one thing in common: they are all extra base hits. Who lead the league in extra base hits? Matt Holliday.

3) This award is the Most Valuable Player. Last year's pick of Justin Morneau as the American League MVP shows that the voters place a good deal of emphasis on one's value to the success of their team. Justin Morneau was arguably not even the most valuable Minnesota Twin last year stat wise. He was teammate with the Cy Young winning Johan Santana and the batting champion Catcher Joe Mauer, both of whom probably had better years statistically. The difference here is that Justin Morneau's recovery from a bad start directly correlated with the team's success. If I could graph Morneau's success at the plate with the team's success in the win column, they would directly correlate.

So what does this mean to this year's NL MVP voting? One would think that, with two very worthy candidates, it would come down to one's value to their individual team. What makes the choice clear for me is that Matt Holliday played on a worse team. The Rockies finished last year tied with the Giants for last in the NL West. The Phillies in 2006 finished 85-77, 2nd in the NL East, having not placed last since 2000. The Rockies had to fight for a lot more, playing the majority of their games against NL west opponents rather than NL East opponents. Finally, the Rockies are a much, much worse team on paper. If Jimmy Rollins' bat fails, he still has 2006 MVP Ryan Howard, the best 2nd baseman in the mlb in Chase Utley, and All Star Centerfielder Aaron Rowand. If Matt Holliday has an off day, he has 5 time all star Todd Helton (never MVP, and older than Howard,) streak player of the century Kaz Matsui (infinitely worse than Chase Utley) and Rookie of the Year Troy Tulowitzki (a noble effort, but worse stat-wise in almost every category than Rowand.) Without Rollins, the Phillies had a much better chance to make the playoffs than a sans-Holliday Rockies.

I came up with an allusion the other day for the stat-impaired.. Comparing Jimmy Rollins with Matt Holliday is like comparing Heart to Led Zeppelin. Heart is an amazing band; Barracuda and Magic Man are both probably in my top 20 favorite songs of all time. They actually take a lot of their influence from Led Zeppelin though. I would argue that, despite the fact that Heart is a great band, they’re strictly worsethan Led Zeppelin. Zep has better vocals, guitar, bass, drums, and better songs as a whole. One might argue that Heart is more valuable to the rock world due to the fact that the lead singer and lead guitarist are females, and Led Zeppelin are all males, but I don’t think that has bearing on the product given out. Just as Heart should be evaluated on works, and not on circumstances, Rollins should be evaluated on stats, and not on positional relevance.

While I don't mean to diminish Rollins amazing season, I don't think he was better than Holliday. If Joe Mauer can't win the MVP for being the batting champion at a catcher position, then one would think that position bears little relevance in the MVP voting. Thus, I can't take the fact that Rollins is a middle infielder into much consideration when trying to establish solid voting guidelines. There is a flaw to be pointed out here with asking regional writers to vote for the award with no conceivable guidelines (How the hell did Carlos Marmol even get one third place vote?) Baseball Writers need to establish formal guidelines, or even better a formal debate Senate style, so that we the fans can understand what they're basing these awards on.