The penalty of a stacked team

September 21, 2009 by Jason@IIATMS

I’ve been wondering about this for some time so I was happy to see Joel Sherman mention it, particularly since he’s on the committee to vote for the AL MVP:

However, the more and more I thought about the Yankees I wondered if there should be some kind of penalty for being in that fantastic lineup because it is hard to make a case that any one player is indispensable.

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So, if I am reading the “unwritten rules” about MVP voting correctly:

  1. Your team must be in contention up until the very end, with rare exceptions: ARod on the Rangers (2003), Andre Dawson (1987), etc.
  2. You can’t be a pitcher unless there is no truly worthy position player to select or your year is otherworldly, see also: Eck (1992), Gibson and McLain (1968)
  3. And what I am seeing lately: You can’t be part of a stacked team, with multiple MVP candidates. That dissolves the “valuable” part of the argument as your team would still be among the best without you.

Point #3 is what Sherman is talking about with regards to Jeter. Sure, Jeter is worthy of being in the discussion, but with ARod and Teix on that team, the team could have survived and succeeded almost equally without Jeter. Fair or not, this is the bias against great teams.

Joe Mauer is carrying his team and is likely the 2009 embodiment of “most valuable”, but should ARod, Jeter or Teix be penalized for having incredibly talented teammates?

 
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