Sunday, October 02, 2005

The No-Brainer Of All No-Brainers

You can consider this "home cooking" if you want, but I think Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the National League MVP "race" nailed. It's Albert Pujols in a land-slide.

Pujols was honored Saturday as the first baseman on the all-time Busch Stadium team. With this final-weekend blast of offense, Pujols seems determined to strike the first wrecking-ball blow to the old ballpark.

Perhaps this late explosion will be noticed by the MVP voters, who must submit their ballots by late Sunday. Remarkably, Pujols may be denied the MVP again if voters transfix on Atlanta's Andruw Jones and his 51 homers and league-leading RBI total while ignoring his mediocre overall batting average (.262) and his comically inferior .207 average with runners in scoring position.

If Jones receives the MVP, it'll be with the lowest batting average in the history of the award. And Jones' batting average with runners in scoring position ranks 64th in the National League.

"Albert is the MVP, and with no disrespect to Andruw Jones, it's by a healthy margin," Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said. "Just put together everything he does: the hitting, the leadership, the defense, the way he runs the bases. The whole game."


Of course Pujols lacks that one thing needed for true baseball greatness: An East coast or West coast address.

1 comment:

David Leftwich said...

Pujols deserves it (of course, as a Cards fan I'm biased) and he has a better shot now the roid-bot Bonds is not in the picture. But the sports writers never seem to give the Cards their due – and Jones does play for “America’s Team”. Unfortunately, I’ll be surprised if he gets, and disappointed if he doesn’t.