BBA Ballot: National League MVP

I never knew.

MVP voting has always been interesting to me, nice to see who wins, interesting to see what the rationale for the voters was (if they share).  Beyond that, though, I'd never given it a lot of thought.

Then, this year, I am one of the official ballots (Mike over at Stan Musial's Stance is the other) for the St. Louis chapter of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.  Which means that I had to sit down and come up with the top 10 players in the National League for 2009.  That's when I had the insight.

This stuff is hard.

I sketched out my list, then went looking for some basic statistical numbers to back up what I was thinking.  Then I'd find one guy that I overlooked.  Then another.  Then maybe this guy should move up.  How do you rank a guy that had great overall numbers on a terrible team.  Where do pitchers fit in.  All of these decisions, just because that jerk of a chapter chairman gave me the MVP vote instead of something like the Cy Young vote.  (Full disclosure: I am the St. Louis chapter chairman.  Never knew I hated myself this much.)

So the following is my best guess, really.  There are players left out that I'd have loved to find room for.  There are players that you probably think should be 5-7 that are 2-4.  I'm sure that there will be plenty of disagreements along the way.  However, I'm pretty sure (especially if you are a regular reader, but most likely everyone) you'll agree with the top of the list.  And that's all that matters, right?

Honorable mention
Chris Carpenter, St. Louis
Andre Ethier, Los Angeles
Derrek Lee, Chicago
Tim Lincecum, San Francisco
Mark Reynolds, Arizona
Adam Wainwright, St. Louis

Ethier really probably should be in the actual ballot, but I wasn't willing to bump my #10 out of the ranks (it's my ballot, sue me) and wasn't sure who else to replace.  Lee and Reynolds had stellar years, but on teams that didn't go anywhere.  The pitchers were all very valuable to their team's success and my initial ballot had two of them in the top ten, but when it came down to it, they'd have to be content with the Cy Young showings.

10. Matt Holliday, St. Louis
42 R, 13 HR, 55 RBI, 2 SB, .353/.419/.604 (stats w/SL)

Obviously, I watched Holliday from the moment he came over and, to be fair, the Cardinals might have won the division without him.  It's as easily conceivable, though, that they may not have.  His presence gave a jolt to the team, both in the lineup and psychologically, and it helped spur them out to their big lead.  For that, I felt he needed at least token recognition.

9. Adrian Gonzalez, San Diego
90 R, 40 HR, 99 RBI, 1 SB, .277/.407/.551

It's hard enough to put up stellar offensive numbers when you play half of your games in the big ballpark that is Petco.  It's even harder to do so when you are basically the only offensive threat your team has.  Yet Gonzalez was able to put up very good all-around numbers while walking a league-leading 119 times.  That puts him ahead of Lee and Reynolds and gets him on the ballot.

8. Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco
79 R, 25 HR, 90 RBI, 5 SB, .330/.387/.556

I knew Sandoval had had a good year.  What I didn't realize, until looking through some things, that Kung Fu Panda was basically the entire San Francisco offense.  When you think of how far that the Giants went, challenging for the NL West title before fading in September, and they did it with Sandoval's offensive contributions being basically all she wrote, well, it shows you how well Giants pitchers did.

7. Chase Utley, Philadelphia
112 R, 31 HR, 93 RBI, 23 SB, .282/.397/.508

Utley and his teammate named above get a little bit of a downgrade because, while we are looking for stellar performances, we are also looking for valuable ones.  There's no doubt that Utley's contributions helped the Phillies immensely, but he did have quite a bit of help on the offensive side of things.  Definitely valuable, definitely wonderful, but not quite as far up as he might have gotten if there'd only been two or three Phillies driving the offense.

6. Prince Fielder, Milwaukee
103 R, 46 HR, 141 RBI, 2 SB, .299/.412/.602

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