NL MVP: In a Two Horse Race- It’s Pujols By a Nose

“It’s designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything is new again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains comes, it stops, and leaves you to face the fall alone.” -A. Bartlett Giamatti

Such is life of a baseball fan. Here we are in mid-November with only a few meaningless awards to argue over and the coals of the Hot Stove to warm us/coax us through the winter. My brothers, I feel your pain. Meaningless or not, however, argue we must.       Thanks to a largely Bonds-free 2005, the NL MVP is now truly debatable for the first time since 2000. Then again one can almost always debate an award that only gives “Most Valuable Player” as its only criterion for acceptance: Most valuable to whom? Is a pitcher eligible? and more recently “What if I was injecting horse testosterone…but for only half the year”?
     For our purposes, however, we’ll go the customary route and assume that it’s the Most Valuable Player to one’s team, that yes, pitchers are eligible, and that horse testosterone is a no-no.  But now to business. Who will win the 2005 NL MVP? Well, that will be up to our friends in the BBWAA, who are about as reliable as Rafael Palmeiro sans Viagra (or under oath, take your pick).
   On a related topic, who “SHOULD” win the 2005 NL MVP, a topic often perceived as unrelated by our “Professional” writing colleagues, the proverbial “race” is between Atlanta Braves Center Fielder Andruw Jones and perennial candidate Albert Pujols. Whither Derrek Lee? Though he had perhaps the best numbers, it’s pretty tough to see how valuable a guy can be to a 79-win Cubs team while getting to play 82 of his games in the “Cozy Confines”…and even tougher to vote for.
   Having said that, Lee is likely to pull in a solid third in the voting, while the Association grapples over Jones v. Pujols, Pepsi v. Coke, and whether or not to scrap the whole thing and just write another Red Sox column.
     Jones, the 2005 Hank Aaron Award winner, made a strong case for himself helping a Braves team out of their diapers and to another 90-win playoff season by leading the league in both home runs and RBI while playing his typically stellar, if nonchalant, defense in center. Head to head with Pujols, however, the Phat man separates himself. The numbers speak for themselves: Pujols dwarfs Jones in batting average (.330 to .263) and OBP (.430 to .347), also pulling in victories in steals, slugging, and sophmoric nicknames relating to one’s last name. Overshadowed by Lee, Pujols also played Gold Glove calibur defense and helped carry a lineup often missing Scott Rolen, Larry Walker, Reggie Sanders and Jim Edmonds. That Cardinals lineup didn’t look so powerful with Abraham Nunez, So Taguchi, and John Rodriguez in their respective places.
    St. Louis First Baseman and resident baseball god Albert Pujols is the rightful owner of this years award, whether it matters or not. But it’s November, it’s cold, and it’s all we’ve got.

Update [2005-11-15 15:45:18 by Sam Miles]: On Tuesday, November 15th, Albert Pujols was crowned the 2005 NL MVP over Andruw Jones and third place Derrek Lee. After finishing in the top 4 in voting for the last four years and being overshadowed by Barry Bonds, Pujols, at the age of 25, has claimed his first league MVP after garnering 18 of the 32 first place votes and the remaining 14 seconds.