Albert Pujols will not win the 2010 NL MVP award when it’s announced formally today @ 1p St. Louis time. Instead, the award will go to Cincinnati’s first baseman Joey Votto. 
And if you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll be more kind to famous TV broadcaster Tim McCarver? Because he Tweeted the news last night.
Hell, Bob Nightengale of USA Today has a vote and he didn’t even give Pujols his second place vote, instead casting a ballot for Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies.
The official CD stance on all individual awards has been pretty steadfast: two shits are given. World Series MVP? We care. NL MVP- I guess it’s nice to have some validation that Albert Pujols will be remembered by future generations as a gigantic talent… but since every single pitch of the MLB season is now in a video database somewhere- I’m thinking that if he’s a 5 time MVP or 10 time MVP when it’s all said and done, the ‘kids’ will be well aware of Albert’s beastly game.
Obviously, the voters have fatigued of Pujols. He leads the league in HR’s and RBI’s? Well… those aren’t the REALLY important stats, they’ll say.
Whatever baseball dorks. He’s right there in .OPS and VORP and any other metric you want to throw out there. But because a vote for Pujols doesn’t validate how smart the voter is for ‘thinking outside the box’, Joey Votto wins.
The guy isn’t not a deserving candidate. He had a hell of year. His team won the NL Central. I don’t think we’re going to riot at Cardinals Clubhouse store later tonight. But if I have to comment on this whole matter I say this:
The 2010 Cardinals were a crap-tastic team. Some might even say they sucked. They ruined many of our collective nights with performances that could have been mistaken for flat-line readings on an EKG.
They finished the season 10 games over .500. Seriously, they did.
Without Albert Pujols, this team wouldn’t have been over .500. I’d hasten to say they’d have been more than 10 games under .500. So I’m pretty confident that if I had to bet a dollar on this never going to happen scenario, that Albert Pujols was worth over 20 wins to the Cardinals in 2010.
Joey Votto gets hurt on opening day?
I don’t know. Maybe they lose the divsion? I tend to think probably not. Might have been closer than what it was, but I’m thinking that the 2010 Reds were a really good collection of players that were either having A) career years B) breakout years) or C) both. Joey Votto is included in that group. Had a great year and I have no idea if he’ll ever come close to repeating it.
However, we do know that Pujols will be right there in this discussion in 2011. That’s the reason Votto won the NL MVP.
So congratulations, Joey. Well done.
Just know that every single person that didn’t cast Pujols in first place would rather have him on their team, you know, if their lives depended on it. But that’s not the definition of ‘most valuable’ anymore.
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