MVP or Choke artist? You make the call.

Rob Farley of LGM is a Mariners fan from way back, but far from an uncritical one.  So I think his opinion on this one is objective not nostalgic.

Rob likes the choice of A-Rod as the American League MVP.

This guy, however, does not.

Alex Rodriguez proved something very interesting yesterday.

By winning the AL MVP as almost everyone expected, beating David Ortiz by 24 points, he proved that you could be the league's best, most talented all-around player of the year, yet still be a big-time loser.

Michael P.  Geffner is a sports columnist for our local paper, the Times Herald-Record, which unabashedly roots for the Yankees.  This is a paper that thought the big story about this year's World Series was all the ex-Yankees playing in it.

Geffner, though, is no homer.  Actually, based on the fact that he writes more about them than about the Yanks, I think he's more of a Mets fan.  So maybe his feelings about A-Rod should be taken with a grain of salt.

Still his description of Rodriguez's play in the post season, while harsh, is dead on:

More than all those stunning regular-season numbers – the 48 homers and .321 batting average and 130 runs batted in – the thing Yankee fans will remember about Rodriguez's 2005 is what he failed to do afterwards. That for yet another post-season, his huge ability, inexplicably, stopped flowing freely but instead lumped like a basketball in the middle of his throat.

It gagged him so completely that he produced five days in October, in the ALDS against the Angels, that trumped instantly anything he did for the six months before it.

It was a collapse of such ugly proportions: a black hole of 2-for-15 at the plate (with zero homers, zero RBI and zero-for-seven with runners on base), a botched high chopper that lamely glanced off his glove and sabotaged Game 2, and hitting into a ninth-inning double play in the finale that nailed shut the Yankees' coffin – and 2005 championship hopes – for good.

Even A-Rod admits to its accuracy:

"I played like a dog," he said afterwards, without anyone rising up to disagree with him.

Geffner's of course knows that the playoffs and World Series don't figure in the MVP voting.  But he's still anti-A-Rod.  The playoffs just prove what he's thought all along.  Rodriguez is a Hall of Famer for sure, but he's not a leader or a winner, and as long as the Yankees are his Yankess, the Bombers are headed for choke after choke in the playoffs.

what stands out for me even more than A-Rod's utterly pathetic on-the-field play was that strange-looking face he made in the dugout right after hitting into that death knell of a double play – that pale, hard-chewing, glazed-over, shell-shocked face.

The TV cameras caught that face and quickly zoomed in for lingering close-ups. The photogs caught that face and editors blew them up into full-page back pages for the next day.

It was a face impossible to ignore. A classic face. The face of a big-time loser.

So much so that he might as well have made an "L" sign with his fingers and placed it in front of his forehead.

And now, that wretched, ghostly, desperate face, more than any other around here, is the face of the Yankees.

Whether anybody wants to admit it or not, the Yankees have very quietly moved beyond the Derek Jeter Era into the Alex Rodriguez one. This team has A-Rod's, not Jeter's, imprint all over it. And in the spirit of Dave Winfield's 1980s, it is an era that continues to come up empty: 0-for-2 just trying to get into the World Series, much less winning a championship.

The Red Sox had the Curse of the Bambino; the Yankees have the Curse of Getting A-Rod.

Personally, I always thought the rap on Winfield was unfair.

I'm a Mets fan and a Red Sox fan, but not, despiste what the Heretik thinks, so full of Yankee hatred I can't give the devil his due.  Frankly, I think Ortiz was more valuable to the Sox than A-Rod was to the Yanks, but I suspect that the reason they were the top two vote getters has more to do with their playing in Boston and New York than their comparative values to their teams.

My feeling is that the truly most valuable player played in Chicago, Cleveland, Minnesota, or Anaheim, and he probably pitched.

But there's always a debate over what the award means anyway.  Is the Most Valuable Player the best player or the player who was most valuable in deciding the team's good fortunes?

I think it's the latter.

How else do you explain this guy?

Update:  Rhubarb!  I love it when the LGM guys blog baseball.   Scott looks at the NL MVP.  Rob charges the mound.

Comments

[KEn]

Calling A-Rod a loser based on his performance in this year's playoffs is really lazy thinking. Baseball is such a statistical sport that it is impossible to fully judge a player based on 15 at-bats.

A .333 hitter would have 5 hits in 15 at-bats, and A-Rod had 2. That's not a huge difference. In his next 15 at-bats A-Rod could easily have had 7 hits, bringing him up to a .300 level.

Even the best players have bad series. All it takes is a homer or two in the next few years' playoffs and this year is forgotten.

I don't quite understand why everyone is so quick to bag on A-Rod. Maybe it's because he is fabulously young, wealthy, attractive, and talented and makes it look soooo easy?

[Linkmeister]

Ted Williams didn't hit well in the one WS he got into, yet he was possibly the best hitter of all time. Ken's got it right; it's a very compressed time frame.

If the Yankees don't like him, I'll take him for my team.

[Exiled in NJ]

AB Run H 2b 3b HR RBI BB SO BA OBP
21 1 0 0 0 0 1 5 6 .000 .192

Anyone recognize this line? 1952 World Series, Yanks win 4-3 over Brooklyn. This line belongs to Brooklyn's sainted first basemen, Gil Hodges. What a bum!

Come to think of it, I recall Johnny Damon was not doing squat until he faced Kevin Brown in the first inning of Game 7 of the 2004 LCS with the bases loaded.

[Linkmeister]

For that matter, Willie Stargell in the 1971 WS with the Pirates:
AB R H 2B RBI BB K BA OBP SLG
24 3 5 1 0 0 1 7 9 .208 .387 .250

Of course, Pops turned it around in 1979:
30 7 12 4 0 3 7 0 6 .400 .375 .833

[harry near indy]

people, we need a better name.

for the player who does very well during the season, call him the player of the year -- or p.o.t.y.

for the player who helps his team win serieses, call him the m.v.p.

[Exiled in NJ]

Take these comments with a grain of salt; we do not receive the Yankees games on Dish, and I have always followed the National League, but there is something in A-rod that brings back the early Mike Schmidt. For years the fans in Philly were ambivalent about Schmitty and his lack of emotion and rah-rah spirit. I don't think fans really appreciated Schmidt until his abilities started to decline, and injuries came. His playoff performances in 1976-78 were nothing exceptional, nor was he the key against the Astros in 1980, but once the series began, he, Steve Carlton and Tug McGraw carried the rest of the team on their backs.

A-rod plays next to a man with all the right gestures and innate leadership abilities. In addition, A-rod struck the mother lode. That's a lot to overcome, but I would ask the Yankee fan if they would rather have Aaron Boone back at third base~~you could make an argument for Scott Brosius, another class player like Saint Derek and Paul O'Neill, but Scott is a bit long in the tooth.

[Jack Roy]

The MVP should go to the player who's most valuable to his team, and has in the past, but recently it tends to get awarded to the biggest offense producer just because that's who the voters tend to watch. Just think: Even after the introduction of the win shares stat, you never hear that discussed when MVPs are decided. Instead, it's BA, HR, and RBI.

I'll second a sentiment of someone whose name escapes me: If the MVP were really awarded to the P who was MV to his team, David Ortiz would have been one of the two leading candidates, and Mariano Rivera would have been the other. Although Garland or Buehrle probably should be considered, too.

The rap against A-Rod was around before the playoffs; during the regular season he was the anti-clutch hitter. Living in New York (and cheering for Boston) I heard plenty of this from fans of many teams: A-Rod was the kind of player who could hit three HRs and 10 RBIs in a blowout, but with RISP in the seventh of a close game with one out, he couldn't hit a single. Ortiz, on the other hand, killed in those situations.

What struck me about the balloting this year was how close it was. I think that Ortiz being a DH probably settled the matter against his winning, but it was still quite a race---something remarkable about that. Not as nice as actually winning, of course. But still.