I'm Back With a Vengeance, Bitches

Sorry about that hiatus there, folks. No one in the media has seemed to care about baseball lately, and nothing egregious was really written about the few trades that have happened so far. But at least I've got my rock, my main dawg, HatGuy, to lean on.

Sorry, but Ramirez was NL's most valuable

No.

Pujols put up big numbers, but midseason acquisition carried Dodgers

Yes. This does not prove thing (1).

If I had an MVP vote in the National League, I’d have given it to Manny Ramirez.

This is one of the 23409234 reasons you do not have a National League MVP vote.

I don’t know how anyone could have voted differently.

1) Using stats
2) Using logic
3) Eliminating completely from consideration players who only played half a year for their respective team and didn't turn in the absolute greatest half season performance of all time
4) Thinking
5) Drawing names out of a hat, and not drawing Ramirez's name

I say this with full appreciation for the season that Albert Pujols had for the Cardinals

You said it with maybe 26% of "full appreciation" of that.

Albert Pujols is a future Hall-of-Famer, barring some disastrous injury. And he just turned in the absolute best season of his career. But here's the kicker, Mikey.

The 2008 Cardinals won more baseball games than the 2008 Dodgers.

If the Cardinals played in the cupcake-y AL West, you'd be preaching to the motherfucking world how Pujols carried his team to the playoffs. Now you're damning him because of the Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, Houston Astros, and Jason Isringhausen.

and with awe for the power numbers of Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard.

Or, you know, the 30 or so other people in the NL who played better than Ryan Howard this year. But yeah...Howard...I guess Howard works.

(I am not exaggerating when I say 30. There is a very real chance that I understated it.)

But Manny put the Dodgers in the playoffs all by himself.

Quite a thing to say about a guy who finished 6th on his team in WARP.

(Actually, interesting factoid -- if you narrow the discussion to Ramirez and Ryan Howard, Manny takes the award if you go by WARP.)

There shouldn’t be an argument.

This is the first thing you've said that made sense. Yet here I am. And here you are.

The legend on the award says “Most Valuable Player.”

Ugh, I thought maybe you didn't know! This is difficult for me to figure out, Mikey! You know there's no question who should win the award, and you know what the award is for.....so where....where was this misstep in logic between the correct steps and the correct conclusion? I feel like you're so close....

It doesn’t say “Most Popular Player,”

That's why Pujols won. It was a fucking popularity contest! And Pujols is so popular, that's why no one shut up about how great a season he was having the entire year! Why couldn't people pay some attention to the true greats like Ryan Howard, Josh Hamilton, and K-Rod?

“Thumper of the Year,”

So, you're not taking Ramirez over Pujols for hitting reasons? I hope to God you don't want to talk defense with me.....

“Best All-Around Hitter,”

"Best All-Around Player" would do just fine.....

“Best Season”

STOP!

The award absolutely means "Best Season." You can argue for centuries about what constitutes having the "Best Season." But the award absofuckinglutely belongs to whoever people believe had the "Best Season." You are a fucking idiot.

or “A Really Nice Guy.”

You know, Sean Casey has been winning way too many MVP awards lately.....

It’s about value to a team’s success; nothing else.

And Pujols was more valuable to what success the Cardinals had than what success the Dodgers had. Period. Take Pujols off the Cardinals, they were never once in the playoff discussion. They lose more wins than the Dodgers would have without Manny, especially considering their outfield logjam (say what you will about Juan Pierre, but he's solid in the "4th outfielder" category.)

In my mind, players for teams that don’t at least contend strongly for the playoffs should never win the MVP. If your team finishes down in the standings, how valuable could you be?

If I think hard enough about this, I'm pretty sure if I took that paragraph as true, I could use it to disprove the most basic fundamentals of logic. Like, maybe that syllogisms were fallacies or something.

Okay, so I can't think of one, but check out this pair.

P1) Putting up a comparatively high OPS is valuable.
P2) Player A put up the highest OPS in the world.
C) Therefore, Player A is valuable.

P1) The same Player A plays for a bad team.
P2) Players who play for bad teams are not valuable.
C) Therefore, Player A is not valuable.

To me, the MVP is the player that a contending team could not have lived without.

Okay, fair. The Dodgers won the division by 2 games. There were 19 players on the Dodgers with a WARP of 2.0 or higher. We're going to have to make many copies of this award!

There’s no question that Pujols is the player the Cardinals can least afford to lose, but St. Louis faded from contention in the NL Central by mid-August.

Because their bullpen was the baseball equivalent of your writing. It was not Pujols's fault, so don't deprive him of the hardware, dude!

They finished third

They finished fourth.

(wow)

— a position they probably could have attained even without Pujols’ help.

Stop everything. I have no clue what the hell is going on here. There are a few possibilities.

1) HatGuy does not realize that the Houston Astros exist, and there are only 5 teams in the NL Central. He then believes (probably accurately) that without Pujols, the Cardinals still beat out the Reds.

2) HatGuy thinks that the two teams were actually tied for 3rd, and he also believes that without Pujols, the Cardinals would have wound up tied with the Astros anyway (i.e. Pujols is worth zero wins).

3) HatGuy mixed up the Astros and Cardinals while looking at the standings, and thought the Cardinals had the .5 game lead at the end of the year. This means he thinks Pujols was worth between 0 and 0.5 wins.

4) HatGuy wrote this sentence just so picky, angry nerds like myself would have their blood pressure raised and increase their risk of heart failure.

He's going to kill us all.

My God.....

Ryan Howard has a better claim to the award than Pujols.

Please, if I do not go into work tomorrow, please e-mail HatGuy's column to my boss. The first place he will look for me is the mental asylum, I know it.

The Phillies fought to the season’s last day to win, and Howard saved his best for last, carrying the team down the stretch. In any other year, Howard would be my MVP.

Your two favorite MVP candidates were not even one of the five best players on their respective teams.

But Philly has a powerful lineup, and Howard wasn’t the sole reason the team won.

I can't even try to be funny with this.

NEITHER WAS MOTHERFUCKING RAMIREZ.

Besides, there was a better candidate than Howard, Pujols or Brewer Ryan Braun, the third-place finisher.

Who?

That is Ramirez

Oh.

the only player who can be mentioned with Pujols in discussions of who is the greatest active right-handed hitter in the game.

But you...Yankees obsession...how did you forget.....

Huh?!???!??!?!?!??!?!?

Manny played for the Dodgers for just over two months, and some voters doubtless felt that mitigated against his candidacy.

I am still willing to watch baseball next season because of that fact.

But rather than arguing against his candidacy, the brevity of his service should have argued more forcibly for it.

My God.....

(I've had to say that far too many times in this post than is healthy for my emotional stability.)

The fact that Ramirez played only two months (that's 1/3 of the season) in the league in which you want him to be considered the Most Valuable Player....is an argument in his favor????

I just tried to think of a superlative form of the word "wrong". All I'm coming up with is FWAP. We'll go with FWAP.

FWAP, Mike Celizic! That is pure FWAP!

The facts are incontrovertible.

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Before Manny arrived in L.A., the Dodgers were fighting to play .500 baseball and stay in contention in the game’s worst division. After he arrived, L.A. started playing at a championship level that carried them to the playoffs.

Any player who has a (partially coincidental) positive impact on any team ever should discount anyone anywhere from any sort of any kind of consideration for anything ever.

His stats were absurd: 53 games, 53 RBIs, 17 home runs, 14 doubles, .489 on-base percentage, .396 batting average, .743 slugging percentage.

Those numbers are incredible. Chipper Jones hit .410 through two months. Give him the fucking MVP award.

(Please do not reply with angry comments explaining that Manny's August and September were better than Jones's April and May. I am well aware, and just wish to point out how 2 months can yield really fluky rate stats.....please....PLEASE don't kill me!!!)

If ever one player carried a team to the playoffs, it was Ramirez and the Dodgers. Without him they were a mediocrity. With him, they were division champs.

And....still kind of a mediocrity. They won 84 games in the NL West, which was not the NL Best, if you catch mah da-rift.

I don’t care that he played just two months.

Sentences like this are why you humiliate yourself any time you try to talk about anything.

I do care that he was the reason the Dodgers won. He’s the very definition of an MVP.

I don't want to continue with this. Anyone else notice that he's just saying the same thing over and over again? I'm....I'm actually fresh out of reasons why this guy's wrong! Fresh out!

My God....he wore me out. I thought I could sit here and be sarcastic and angry forever. But I can't! This article is a test of my endurance. I just don't have it!

Unfortunately, too many people think that the MVP should go to the player most responsible for a team’s success

Now there's a lunatic idea.

Haven't you been using this description of MVP to attempt to prove why Manny is the MVP the entire time? Now you're saying it's unfortunate people think like that?

I can't take it anymore. Don't care anymore. GREAT sentence, HatGuy.

— unless somebody has a really phenomenal year for a team that didn’t have much success.

Whatever. Not offensive at all. Don't care that Pujols had a phenomenal year. Let it go. Serenity. Can't let him make me blow a gasket.

Alex Rodriguez once won for being indispensible to the Rangers’ last-place finish, and Ernie Banks once won for distinguished service to another lousy Cubs team.

That's fine. Roll with the punches, logic. Just ride it out. He can't write forever. He'll get sleepy or hungry or something soon. Most likely hungry. For desserts.

The other factor voters consider that they shouldn’t is popularity.

Just....let it go that no one cared that Manny was a dick. Don't worry there Nolesy, hang in there. You don't need to mention that Manny being a jerk was as much a reason for people loving him as hating him by the end of the season.

Give them a chance to punish a guy they don’t like in favor of someone they do, and they’ll take it more often than not. Ted Williams twice lost MVP races to Joe DiMaggio because the voters liked Joe D. better than they liked the Splendid Splinter.

Stuff from the 1940's. Great. Don't worry about it. It's....it's ok. What people did back then is probably relevant, because baseball thinking hasn't advanced at all (at least I think it hasn't). Nothing can make me angry.

Also, the NL MVP award wasn’t about Boston or anything other than who meant the most to the success of his team. And there’s no question about it. Manny’s your man. The fact that he finished fourth is no discredit to him, but to the voters.

You know, even if I'm probably going to hell for writing on this blog and spending so much of my free time disparaging someone I've never met and has honestly caused me no harm whatsoever, it's comforting knowing that ol' Mikey will be right there beside me. He broke the 8th Commandment at least 400 times in this article, and I'm sure there was some adultery or whatnot thrown in there as well.

Come to think of it.....he also worshipped a false god (Manny), did not honor his mother and father (they'd be embarrassed of having a son that can't read the MLB standings and tell others in what place a team finished), stole people's time, coveted more qualified people's MVP votes, raped logic, murdered reason.....

Well heck, at least you didn't write it on a Sunday, didn't take the Lord's name in vain, nor did you make any reference to coveting a woman (interesting....). 3/10 ain't bad, Mike.