It’s not terribly surprising that Jim Leyland is going to say that he thinks his guys — Miguel Cabrera — should be the MVP over someone else.* But his comments about why Mike Trout may win the award instead of Cabrera are pretty fun:
“I mean this respectfully,” Leyland said during the interview. “I don’t mean this disrespectfully — I think what could be a little problem for Miggy … he could run into one of these Wonderboy stories.
“You know — a young kid, 20 years old, everybody gets excited about that, everybody loves that. It has a nice ring to hit, it should have. So I think that’s dangerous for Miggy.”
Between “clown question, bro,” “blinkin’ fertilizer” and now “wonderboy stories,” this has been a pretty good year for silliness. Maybe it’s just society.
That aside, I think it’s a little rich of Leyland to argue that some sort of off-the-field narrative (Trout’s Wonderboy status) may unfairly drive the MVP race when, in the very same interview he says that Cabrera’s track record — he talks about Cabrera’s career numbers — should be taken into consideration. Neither Trout’s age nor Cabrera’s past performance should have any bearing for a single season award.
*Please forget for a moment that last year Leyland publicly said that he didn’t think his guy, Justin Verlander, should win the MVP award.