The baseball writers screwed up yesterday and somehow gave the AL MVP award to Alex Rodriguez, the league's most valuable player. Odd.

A-Rod now at least owns two of the four awards that he should have won in his career. Eh? It's progress.

I just wanted to run the numbers for the whole list because there were some players who received votes (Podsednik, Wickman) who wouldn't make the top five for the team's MVP vote and some (Peralta, Crawford) who were overlooked even though they are the types of players that usually garner a good bit of voter attention (i.e., a power-hitting shortstop and a good leadoff hitter). Also, prominent DH's (Hafner and Ortiz) complicated the voting to some extent. How do you weigh their batting against their non-fielding?

Since I was criticized for ranking, not weighting the statistics included, I will include both ranked and weighted stats (even though the comparison between averaged rankings and averaged averages is fundamentally unsound—averaged averages are an issue because they might include different denominators).

The stats I will use are Baseball Prospectus's VORP, Bill James' Batting and Total Win Shares, and Baseball Reference's adjusted OPS+. I know that using the batting stats puts the pitchers involved at a severe disadvantage, but frankly, pitchers have no business being considered in MVP voting, at least pitchers this side of Roger Clemens. I also threw in a few of the better players left off the writers' ballots.

So here goes…The data are broken down in order to fit the display. First, the actual vote totals (rankings are by the final ranking) and VORP:

Now, here are the Win Shares and OPS+ data:

Here are the final standings by average rank then weighted average:

As for which stats correlate best to the final vote, VORP was best (0.712 coefficient for value and weighted value, and 0.556 for rank). Total Win Share edged out Batting Win Shares, and OPS+ came in last).

Podsednik benefited from the good press early in the season, even though no real case could be made for him based on his stats. He was the only player on the list with a below average adjusted OPS (a woeful 86). Meanwhile, Perralta, for whom one could make a decent case for being the best player on a playoff contender, suffered from the "who's that?" syndrome. Why should writers actually get to know the players before they vote?

However, the worst player by far on the list was Bob Wickman, who received one ninth-place vote (2 points), because he was basically the Indians closer and had a decent year (2.47 ERA, 45 saves). He earned 8 Win Shares in total for his efforts, which made me wonder what was the lowest total for a vote-getter in the MVP voting.

So I looked it up, and Wickman doesn't even approach the worst vote-getter. That honor would fall to Earl Torgeson, a good but not great first baseman who played just 25 games for the fourth-place Braves in 1949 and earned a measly three Win Shares. Perhaps the worst to garner a good chunk of votes was Bobby Reeves, a Senators shortstop with a 60 OPS+ in 1927, who finished twelfth in the AL voting, right behind fellow middle infielders Tony Lazzeri (who had one first-place vote but finished 11th) and Joe Sewell.

Name	Yr	Lg	WS	MVP Pts	% Max
Earl Torgeson	1949	NL	3	2	0.60%
Bobby Malkmus	1961	NL	4	1	0.45%
Elston Howard	1967	AL	4	7	2.50%
Joe Cronin	1943	AL	4	3	0.89%
Johnny Kling	1911	NL	4	1	1.56%
Ken Wood	1950	AL	4	2	0.60%
Marty McManus	1932	AL	4	2	2.50%
Doc Gautreau	1925	NL	5	2	2.50%
Elden Auker	1941	AL	5	1	0.30%
Frankie Crosetti	1944	AL	5	2	0.60%
Granny Hamner	1957	NL	5	3	0.89%
Hughie Critz	1929	NL	5	5	6.25%
Monte Irvin	1952	NL	5	5	1.49%
Phil Todt	1927	AL	5	1	1.56%
Al Lopez	1945	NL	6	2	0.60%
Bobby Reeves	1927	AL	6	7	10.94%
George Gibson	1911	NL	6	4	6.25%
George Stovall	1913	AL	6	5	7.81%
Jimmie Wilson	1932	NL	6	5	6.25%
Jose Valdivielso	1955	AL	6	1	0.30%
Mark Christman	1947	AL	6	4	1.19%
Mookie Wilson	1989	AL	6	1	0.26%
Rabbit Maranville	1933	NL	6	11	13.75%
Rick Ferrell	1942	AL	6	8	2.38%
Rollie Hemsley	1944	AL	6	4	1.19%
Sam Agnew	1914	AL	6	2	3.13%
Ski Melillo	1926	AL	6	6	9.38%