Jon Paul Morosi’s argument for CC Sabathia or David Price over Felix Hernandez for the Cy Young Award (that I tweaked yesterday) basically boiled down to the fact that Sabathia and Price are in a pennant race:
To be the best, one must do what Sabathia and Price have all
season — compete against the best lineups, in postseason-type
atmospheres, before crazed crowds at hitter-friendly ballparks. And win.
Based on his latest tweet, that doesn’t apply to the MVP award:
It’s becoming clear that Miguel Cabrera should win the AL MVP over Josh Hamilton.
Got that? Sometimes pennant races matter to Morosi. Sometimes they don’t matter. It changes literally daily now.
I guess If you’re looking for a thread of consistency in Morosi’s major awards choices — Greinke! Sabathia/Price! Cabrera! — the best I can do is to infer that Morosi, like so many writers, roots for good stories. Greinke was a redemption story and a comeback story. Felix Hernandez doesn’t give you a ton of drama. Sabathia and Price have that mano y mano playoff race thing going for them. Hamilton’s redemption story is old hat, but Cabrera is a year removed from that drunkenstein weekend during the White Sox series.
The
writers get on stat-oriented people for seeing everything through
numbers. I think writers are far more interested in seeing everything
through dramatic narrative. It seems to me that’s what Morosi is doing here anyway.
