No Morneau!

If you read any relatively enlightened baseball analysts---such as ESPN's Rob Neyer or Keith Law, or Rotoworld---you will probably have heard the arguments as to why Justin Morneau is such a poor choice for the AL MVP.

And, needless to say, I agree. My argument for why this is so would not differ much from any of the aforementioned people's argument. He was the third best player on his own team, let alone less of a valuable commodity than many other AL players.

The question is, should we even care anymore? Many people fret about these awards, even though they really do not mean much---players would probably gladly trade them for team achievements, and they have no lasting impact on much of anything. Yet, personally I always hope the "best" candidate wins, or at least one of the best (Albert Pujols was a more deserving candidate than Ryan Howard, but at least Howard was fairly deserving too).

I think Rob Neyer said it best in his ESPN chat today: "The up-side is that there's clearly still plenty of room in my business for young men who enjoy facts."

Whenever I get discouraged because I think baseball has evolved enough that people with my viewpoint are already very prevalent, I can remember that Justin Morneau was voted as the 2006 American League MVP.