AL MVP

In my quest to show that the Twins have the MVP of the American League in Justin Morneau, I proved myself wrong.  Apparently I am not savvy enough with this website to put up a pdf of the stats that I used for the analysis.  Therefore, I can only provide the link.  The stats I used for this analyis are through Sunday, September 21, 2008 and can be found at Yahoo! Sports.  These stats update daily so they may be different from what you see, but it is the best that I can do right now.  http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/stats/bycategory?cat=Batting&conference=AL&sort=22   These stats are for the players I think are the leading contenders:  Dustin Pedroia (BOS), Aubrey Huff (BAL), Justin Morneau (MIN), Kevin Youkilis (BOS), Alex Rodriguez (NYY), and Josh Hamilton (TEX).

For my analysis I used the following 7 statistical categories:  runs (R), hits (H), home runs (HR), runs batted in (RBI), batting average (AVG), on base percentage (OBP), and slugging percentage (SLG).  If you add up every hitter’s ranking in the American League and divide it by 7 (number of categories used), the results are:  Pedroia=15.14, Huff=9.43, Morneau=9.43, Youkilis=12.14, Rodriguez=9.57, and Hamilton=9.57.  However, if you remove the Hits (H) category since this is completely encompassed by the Batting Average (AVG) category, then Pedroia=17.5, Huff=9.67, Morneau=10.5, Youkilis=10.17, Rodriguez=5.83, and Hamilton=10.5.  Another reason for removing Hits (H) from the analysis is to not penalize players who have played in less games and therefore have less at-bats. 

Based on my analysis, I would give the AL MVP to Rodriguez again.  It is worth noting that things can drastically change over the remaining games as evidenced by the fact that Morneau=9.33 through 9-18-08.  He didn’t have such a good weekend against Tampa Bay.  I wish I could find two more stats for each player:  Batting Average with Runners in Scoring Position and Batting Average with Two Outs.  I think these would help Morneau’s case, but then again, I thought this analysis would have proved he was the AL MVP.  Alex Rodriguez is just too good.

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