MVP Candidates: Why Is Pujols Favored by so Much Over Howard?

Average looks nice when a player has a good one and it sure catches everyone's eye when it comes to Pujols running for MVP. This should not be the reason Howard is counted out!

First off, does MVP not stand for Most Valuable Player? Pujols is not valuable to his team's winning—all the Cardinals have done in the clutch is lose. They were one game out of the wild card, ahead of the Phillies, just a few weeks ago, and the big Albert Pujols has his worst hitting month of his season in September.

Pujols is known to stack his numbers early on in the year and fail to perform in the clutch. Do not forget Howard has turned out to be the top first baseman this year fielding wise according to all of the experts on ESPN—what a turnaround he turned out to be there! Does Defense not win championships anymore?

How valuable was Pujols during his stint on the DL? Ryan Howard had a bad start in April everyone knows that, the first 20 games were his biggest downfall in terms of hitting and note that the Phillies did not even break .500 in the first 20.

However, when Howard's hot, the Phillies are hot! Pujols has more GDP than Howard, a strikeout is one out, a double play is two, if strikeouts should effect a players chance in the MVP voting I sure hope GDP's are worse to a players chances. And I thought that the final score went by runs not hits?

Howard is the biggest run producer in the Major Leagues no questions asked, with 36 more RBI's than Pujols and five more runs as well, that shows right there why the Phillies will be in the playoffs and Pujols' cards will not.

This is why the experts are starting to lean towards Howard, you should research some more for yourself instead of looking at batting average only, heck if we went by that Ichiro (not counting this year obviously) and Chipper would be winning MVP's left and right with their bottom 10 record teams!

There is no way Ryan Howard can be counted out of the race with his league destruction in the HR and RBI leader board. Howard leads the NL in HRs by 9 and in RBI's by 27 (do I need to repeat that)!? That is more RBI's than Pujols has had in any month all year!

The only plus Pujols has over Howard is his average, five more steals (pointless) and hits. Pujols has way more hits than Howard's but if Pujols falls so far short to Howard in HRs, RBI's and runs then what difference does it make to have more hits.

Howard also has a current .371 average w/RISP 2 outs while Pujols has a .293 average w/RISP 2 outs! Hitting with RISP 2 outs is clutch towards every game in my opinion. Even with Pujols' astonishingly higher average than Howard's... how come this stat totally flipped in Howard's favor? Pure clutch hitting would be the answer to that one and in my opinion is the difference in the two players contributions to their teams success!

YOU WANT NUMBERS??? (As of September 20, 2008)

Average = PUJOLS-.353  Howard-.248

HRs = HOWARD-46  Pujols-34

RBI's = HOWARD-141  Pujols-105

Runs = HOWARD-98  Pujols-93

Steals = PUJOLS-6  Howard-1

Hits = PUJOLS-177  Howard 145 (51% of Howard's hits were XBH, 43% of Pujols hits were XBH)

I forgot to mention, Howard's numbers will only gain on Pujols because there is still 9-10 games left to play in September and September is evidently Howard's hitting month!