Does Justin Verlander Deserve to Win the AL MVP?

Dominating the Mound

Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Justin Verlander has been the most dominant pitcher in baseball this year. At 24-5 he leads all of baseball in wins, innings pitched (251.0), strikeouts (250), and WHIP (0.92) in addition to being first in the American League with a 2.40 ERA. Verlander also has 4 complete games, of which he has one no-hitter and three other times he pitched eight innings or more and gave up two or less hits during those outings. His fastball can reach triple digits even late into games, his changeup can leave batters looking foolish with an early swing, and his curve breaks so hard that you would think it was because just for an instance earth’s gravity changed. Perhaps just as important, his Tigers won the AL Central by double digit games. He is having one of the best seasons a pitcher has had in about a decade. The AL Cy Young is his, but what about the AL MVP?

The AL MVP Race

The MVP race in the American League is certainly up for grabs. With just a few days left in the season there seem to be legitimate arguments for a large number of players in the American League:

Curtis Granderson (Yankees): 119 RBI (1^st in AL), 136 R (1^st in MLB), 41 HR, 25 SB, and .364 OBP but is only hitting a mere .262 in addition to 169 strikeouts.

Jacoby Ellsbury (Red Sox): .321 BA, .376 OBP, 212 H, 105 RBI, 39 SB, 32 HR, but he may get votes taken away by his teammate Adrian Gonzalez and the Red Sox just went through one of the worst Septembers in baseball history: At the beginning of the month, the Sox were a half game up on the Yankees for the best record in the AL and nine games up on the Tampa Bay Rays. The Red Sox, however, went 7-20 in the month of September and are officially out of the playoffs (losing the AL Wild Card to the Rays on the final day of the season)

Adrian Gonzalez (Red Sox): .338 BA, .410 OBP, 213 H (T-1^st in MLB), 117 RBI, 27 HR, 108 R  (Same notes as Jacoby Ellsbury)

Michael Young (Rangers): .338 BA, .380 OBP, 213 H (T-1^st in MLB), 106 RBI

Jose Bautista (Blue Jays): .302 BA, .447 OBP (1^st in MLB), 43 HR (1^st in AL), 155 H, 103 RBI, 105 R, 132 BB (1^st in MLB) but of all the people on this list, he is the only one whose team is not going to the playoffs

Part Time Player

Then there is Justin Verlander, whose statistics I went through in the first paragraph. It seems like there is a logjam up at the top of this race and that Verlander deserves to be in the discussion just as much as anyone else considering the kind of season he has had. However, should a pitcher win the MVP of a league? The Cy Young award was first introduced in 1956, since then only nine pitchers have won the MVP in their respective leagues: Don Newcombe (Brooklyn Dodgers, 1956), Sandy Koufax (Los Angeles Dodgers, 1963), Denny McLain (Detroit Tigers, 1968), Bob Gibson (St. Louis Cardinals, 1968), Vida Blue (Oakland Athletics, 1971), Rollie Fingers (Milwaukee Brewers, 1981), Willie Hernandez (Detroit Tigers, 1984), Roger Clemens (Boston Red Sox, 1986), and Dennis Eckersley (Oakland Athletics, 1992). The general thought throughout baseball history has been that the pitcher’s MVP was the Cy Young. Is it fair that a pitcher can win both the Cy Young and MVP but a field player can only win the MVP? That does not seem like the right thing to do. In winning the Cy Young award, you are saying that pitcher is the most valuable pitcher in their respective league but can a pitcher really be the most valuable player in the league if, in comparison to field players, he only plays a small percentage of his team’s games? Here is a look at the percent of games played of all of the AL MVP candidates by dividing the games the player played in by the total number of games a team plays in the season, 162  (numbers are rounded to the nearest percent)

Curtis Granderson: 156 GP/162 G = 96%

Jacoby Ellsbury: 158 GP/162 G = 98%

Gonzalez: 159 GP/162 G = 98%

Young: 159 GP/162 G = 98%

Bautista: 149 GP/162 G = 92%

Verlander: 34 GP/162 G = 21%

Those numbers pretty much speak for themselves. The most valuable player in the league should not be one who plays less than a quarter of his team’s total games. The AL MLP, and all MVP winners for that matter, should be a player who goes out there and can put his mark on just about every game. As impressive as 24 wins are for Verlander, it is tough rewarding him such a prize when he is not an every day player. In addition, over the years the number of wins racked up has counted less and less when evaluating a pitcher, this point was hit home last year when Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners won the AL Cy Young during a year where he posted a 2.27 ERA (1^st in MLB), 249.2 IP (1^st in AL) and 232 SO to only 70 BB but having a record of only 13-12. So Verlander almost becaming the first pitcher to get to 25 wins in a season since Bob Welch in 1990 does not mean as much as it used to.

          What if Derrick Rose (the 2011 NBA MVP) had played in 21% of the regular season games that the Bulls were involved in last season? That would come out to 17 games over the 82 game season. Even if he averaged the same statistics, the numbers would not be as impressive because of the games played. Although the comparison seems a little farfetched since pitchers need more days off, doesn’t that help the argument? If pitchers need so many days off so that they can perform consistently throughout the season, he is not someone a team can turn to for a big win if he has only rested one, two or three days. An every day player is available and ready to perform every game, no matter how many days rest he has between games, and can be more relied on in big games. That is why field players deserve the MVP and pitcher