Justin Verlander, Most Valuable Pitcher

Justin Verlander: Not merely a unanimous Cy Young
winner, but the Most Valuable Player to boot.

Justin Verlander was named American League Most Valuable Player on Monday. He is the first starting pitcher to win an MVP since Roger Clemens in 1986, a year that seems recent to me but is a quarter century ago and thus a lifetime ago to at least some of you.

That Verlander is even eligible for the honor, much less the winner, is rather controversial in some circles. Pitchers, the argument goes, have the Cy Young Award; MVP should be limited to position players.

The rules, however, specifically say that pitchers are eligible.

Eligible, but -- at least since 1969, when the mound was lowered and the strike zone redefined -- seldom victorious. No National League pitcher, starter or reliever, has been voted MVP since Bob Gibson in 1968.

Ignore the three relief pitchers who've won the AL award -- all of which were mistakes by an electorate that hadn't begun to come to grips with the meaning of the save statistic -- and only two AL starters (Clemens and Vida Blue in 1971) have taken the honor since Denny McLain in 1968.

Verlander was helped some by the flaws in the other candidates' arguments. Jacoby Ellsbury's team faded badly in September. Jose Batista -- seen by the sabermetric community as the best player in the league -- fell off in the second half, and his team was never in the race. Curtis Granderson led the league in runs and RBIs and bopped 41 homers, but his rate stats weren't great. Miguel Cabrera, Verlander's teammate, probably crippled his chances with his DWI arrest before spring training.

So Verlander emerged from a divided field.

There is a legitimate reason to be skeptical of a modern pitcher's MVP candidacy, and it has nothing to do with the Cy Young Award. It has to do with workload.

Blue worked 312 innings in his MVP season. McLain had 336, Gibson 304. Sandy Koufax had 311 in his MVP season (1963). On the other hand, Clemens had 254 in his MVP year, Verlander 251.

Two-hundred fifty innings is a lot in today's pitch count era. But the difference between 300 innings and 250 is significant. That's Alex Burnett's entire workload in 2011. Koufax worked 300-plus innings in three seasons, and in each he faced 300-plus more batters than Verlander did this season.

Were I a voter, I'd have an easier time voting for a pitcher with a 1960s-type workload than a 2000s workload. I'm not complaining that Verlander won, but I wouldn't have complained if Ellsbury, Batista, Granderson or Cabrera had either.

Notes, quotes and comments

Replace the cat in the cartoon with a beagle (and ditch the pipe) and this could be me, right down to the name.

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Catching up on a few links ...

* Prospect guru John Sickels had an intriguing interview with Howard Norsetter, the Twins international scouting coordinator. The Twins commit more resources to finding players in non-traditional corners of the world than anybody else — heck, maybe more than the rest of baseball combined — Holland, Germany, Australia, the Czech Republic, Russia ... Norsetter is the man behind that.

Incidentally, Sickels' annual self-published prospect book is out and as good as ever.

* The Japanese writer who kept Joe Mauer from a unanimous MVP explained his vote for Miguel Cabrera to the New York Times.

Keizo Konishi of the Kyodo News (he covers the Seattle Mariners and Ichiro Suzuki) isn't convincing me. His logic:

• He rejected the Yankees candidates (Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira) and any Angels candidates because those teams won their divisions too handily;
• He believes the Tigers lineup needed Cabrera more than the Twins needed Mauer;
• He didn't know the details of Cabrera's final-weekend bender when he cast his ballot, and doesn't know if knowing more about it would have affected his vote;
• And Mauer didn't play in the World Baseball Classic. Really, that was a factor:

“Maybe not many Americans think this way, but outside of America, the World Baseball Classic is a huge deal for the Japanese people — enormous. And that year, Cabrera played to the semifinals. Mauer didn’t. And how many games both players played was different, too.”

I wrote here at the time that I could see somebody picking somebody other than Mauer because Mauer missed a month of the season. But in that case, I thought it had to be Jeter. I still think that.

More thoughts about Mauer, catchers and the MVP

It is an unofficial part of the BBWAA's voting process for the awards, at least the major ones — somebody who casts a vote that leaves the rest of the baseball world puzzled writes a piece explaining/defending the vote.

Let us hope that Kezio Konishi writes such a piece — and that it's readable by those of us who don't read Japanese.

Konishi writes for Kyodo News in Japan, and he covers the Mariners — or perhaps what he covers is Ichiro Suzuki. In the rotation system the BBWAA uses to determine who votes for the awards, he was one of the two votes allotted to the Seattle chapter — and he cast his vote for Miguel Cabrera.

Now, I said this Tuesday: I'm not upset that Mauer didn't win a unanimous vote. He missed all of April, and if someone insists that a full season of Derek Jeter or Mark Teixeira is worth more to his team than five months of Mauer, I won't agree but I'm not going to write the guy off as hopeless.

But Cabrera? His bulk power numbers aren't much better than Mauer's ( 34 HR MC, 28 JM; 103 RBI MC, 98 JM); there's a difference in defensive value between a quality catcher and an OK first baseman; and, of course, Mauer didn't get stone drunk with the division title on the line.

This was just a stupid vote.

Konishi, you got some 'splaning to do.

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Mauer is the sixth catcher to win an MVP award; it's the eighth to go to a catcher, Yogi Berra having won three of them.

The list: Mickey Cochrane, 1934; Berra in 1951, 1954 and 1955; Elston Howard in 1963; Thurman Munson in 1976; Ivan Rodriguez in 1999; and now Mauer.

Interesting list. Cochrane and Berra are in the Hall of Fame, of course; Rodriguez, still active, figures to join them. Those three are among the handful of players with a claim to the title of greatest catcher ever.

Howard and Munson aren't on that level. Howard might have been, but he was stuck behind Berra for about a third of his career — Howard's rookie season was Berra's third MVP year. He was the Yankees' first black player (Casey Stengel supposedly grumbled: "They finally get me one, and they get me the only one who can't run") and the first black to win the AL MVP Award.

I suspect that had Howard come up with another team, he'd be a Hall of Famer.

Munson is another matter. He died at age 32 — he was piloting a small plane in midseason 1979 and crashed — but, as Bill James has noted, his career was in a downhill spiral. He was having back problems — one of the banes of catchers — and his power had largely dried up. He'd have played longer had he lived — but the quality of that play was not going to be up to the standard he had set. And that quality wasn't truly as high as that of Berra, Cochrane, Rodriguez or Howard.

And now Mauer.

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Which raises the point that the Yankees' many dynasties have been largely built on great outfielders (Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle, Jackson) and great catchers (Schang, Dickey, Berra, Howard, Munson, Posada).

A quick ranking of Yankees catchers:

1) Berra.

2) Bill Dickey. A .313 lifetime average, albeit in a hitting-rich era. Quietly platooned for years. Credited with teaching Berra to catch.

3) Jorge Posada. Never a great glove behind the dish and getting worse with age, but a quality switch-hitter. Should have gotten more MVP consideration in 2003; he finished third (behind Alex Rodriguez and Carlos Delgado).

4) Howard. Could rank ahead of Posada, but Jorge has had more good years and more playing time.

5) Wally Schang. Why this man isn't in Cooperstown in a befuddlement. Caught for the A's in the final years of the $100,000 infield dynasty; two pennants there. Traded to Boston for the last season of that dynasty; total of three pennants, two World Series wins. Traded to the Yankees for the start of the first Ruth dynasty; three more pennants and another World Series win — that's six and two. Moved on again to the Browns, who didn't win, and then back to the A's where he backed up Cochrane for another pennant and World Series title. All told, seven pennants, three World Series titles.

And a productive switch-hitter to boot with a lifetime OBP of .393.

6) Munson.

Pretty rich crop there, made all the more impressive by the fact that of the bunch only Schang spent a significant part of his career elsewhere.

M(auer)VP

Well, it wasn't unanimous, but it was darn close.

I had figured that there would be a first-place vote or two for somebody else simply on the basis that Joe Mauer missed the first month of the season. That that vote went to Miguel Cabrera rather than one of the Yankees duo of Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira — that was a surprise.

Mauer's been the best player the the American League three of the past four seasons; this BBWAA vote is just catching up to that reality. They've had some help in maintaining their ignorance — people in and around the Twins organization have fed the writers' fascination with RBIs — and I also believe that the writers were waiting for a power surge. Had they given him the MVP with 13 homers in 2006, they'd have a difficult time not giving it to him when he had a big power year.

I fully expect a fresh wave of speculation to begin about Mauer and his contract status. My view is that this award doesn't change anything. I don't see Mauer and his agent, Ron Shapiro, using the trophy as a club.

There's been speculation about the status of talks. I suspect that speculation will continue right up to the press conference to announce a signing. The Twins are pretty close-lipped about contract talks, and Shapiro, unlike Scott Boras, isn't a self-serving leaker.

But one thing that should be noted is that the Twins have taken pains in recent weeks to say they're comfortable with going into Mauer's walk year without a contract. They weren't willing to do that with Santana, because Santana and his agent essentially told the Twins he wasn't going to re-sign; he wanted the bigger stage.

Mauer's only leaving if he decides he wants to leave. I see no reason to think that's the case.

The best player in baseball, Part II

Rob Neyer on the AL MVP race:

Frankly, I'm worried that the baseball writers are already conspiring to rob Joe Mauer -- for the third time -- of an award that should rightly be his.

"Conspiring" might be an overstatement. Looking for an excuse to give it to somebody else, maybe.

Mauer's MVP case would be helped greatly if the pitching staff would contribute more than one quality start a week, if the middle infielders and the third outfielder would play just average ball. Then the Twins would be seriously in the hunt.

Mauer's the best player in the league. But MVPs traditionally have to win games, and Mauer's team is below .500.