"The decisions we make in Washington have a direct impact on the people in our country, obviously." — New Albany, Ind., Nov. 13, 2007
I was looking at calendars this afternoon and stumbled upon one of "Bushisms," obviously.
Anyways, as promised, here are my 2007 NL awards. Click here for the AL awards.
When selecting the winners, I take into account several factors.
The first is how a player performs with respect to his position. For the record, I am not going to pick a player who performed at a high level at a brutal position but wasn't even in the top five or 10 in "Win" stats.
The second criteria is "Win" stats. The Hardball Times owns a stat for this, as does Baseball Prospectus—called Win Shares Above Bench (WSAB) and Value over Replacement Player (VORP), respectively.
I will reference these stats throughout my writings, and for the most part, utilize both.
Next, I will look at exceptional play—a streak, a record, or something a player did on an individual level to lift his team to a higher level.
That is not to say a player from a losing team cannot win an award, although admittedly, those players are at a slight disadvantage.
Warning: NL East fans, flick your TVs back to ESPN.
MVP - David Wright
There's a definite argument for a handful of other players here, and I actually have changed my mind on this, given where I originally stood with my vote for Matt Holliday.
However, the numbers don't lie—nor are they artificially inflated by a home ballpark.
Before I get into too much detail about David Wright, I just want to remind everyone that he was only 24 years old this year. Another scary factor: He's showing steady improvement across the board, and he just joined the illustrious 30/30 club.
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