Celizic: Lee Will Be MVP, Which is Too Bad

November 14, 2005 by cubsnet

NBCSports.com's Mike Celizic thinks that Derrek Lee will named the National League MVP on Tuesday, and CubsNet.com makes a formal request that Celizic stop writing about baseball.

Celizic predicts Lee will win based on the voters having chosen stats (Alex Rodriguez) over value (David Ortiz) in the American League race. Celizic, unfortunately, leaves the stats/value dichotomy unexplained.

To Celizic, Andruw Jones is the "mo[st] valuable in absolute terms." That's because Celizic is "silly enough to think the award is about value, not about statistics." Here's part of Jones's value, according to Celizic:

Jones led the majors in home runs with 51, and he was the only player to break the 50 barrier in the year that baseball was serious — but not serious enough for Congress — about steroids. The Atlanta center fielder also won his eighth straight Gold Glove and led the NL in RBIs with 128.

Celizic mentions Jones's 51 homers and 128 RBI's a second time later in the article. Apparently the dichotomy is not so clean.

Celizic goes on to, in effect, admit that Lee and Pujols were better than Jones. But Jones wins in Celizic's mind because 1) the Cardinals were too good, 2) the Cubs were too bad, and 3) the Braves "limpled through the season" and thus were in a tighter pennant race. So, you see, it's too bad Jones won't win.

In any event, despite Celizic's lament, Pujols likely has the MVP in the bag.

Discussion elsewhere:
Baseball Primer Newsblog

For better analysis of the MVP race, see Rich Lederer.

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