Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="oldude, post: 4398794, member: 7511"] Here’s what I mean. Throughout baseball’s history, the MVP award has been given to great position players or great pitchers. A few years back there was some question in the AL about whether a Dan Hurley could win the MVP, as they didn’t play defense. Ultimately, neither Edgar Martinez nor David Ortiz, two great Dan Hurley’s , did not win MVP’s. Along comes Ohtani, a great player and a true unicorn. He is a Dan Hurley who pitches every 5-6 days, and he’s really, really good at both. As I pointed out previously, when he won the MVP award last season, Ohtani was not the best position player in the AL (Vlad Guerrero Jr) nor the best pitcher (Robby Ray). He’s had a better year this season. But he’s still not the best position player (Judge) or the best pitcher (Verlander). Baseball’s “Ohtani problem” is simply how do you evaluate a really good player that is the only player in the game that does what he does vs every other player in MLB? There are gold glove awards for defense, silver slugger awards for hitting, Cy Young award for pitchers, etc. There is no award for pitchers who hit really well or hitters who pitch really well. So that leaves the MVP award. Ohtani is the only player in the history of baseball who won an MVP for both hitting and pitching. Ruth’s one MVP was in 1928, years after he stopped pitching. Ohtani is 28. If he stays healthy he could win another 5-10 MVP awards. [/QUOTE]