I was prepared to spend most of today's article berating the two Chicago writers who voted for Sammy Sosa over Barry Bonds for 2001 NL MVP. Unfortunately, I now also have to cover the appalling election of Ichiro as 2001 AL MVP. I thought they had baseball writers vote on these things because of their supposed objectivity.

Before I continue with the specific problems in this years MVP voting, let me lay down some of my general thoughts about the award.

1. The Most Valuable Player award has nothing at all to do with how the other 24 players on a candidate's team performed. This means that stats like runs and RBI are not overly helpful in determining an MVP. Too many voters get hung up looking at these popular statistics. Realizing this would also help prevent writers from focusing on the overall success of a team, or on the fact that x team needed so much more help than y team to do well and only was able to do so with the help of said player. When writers look at these things, they aren't measuring anything that helps determine a player's value.

2. Counting stats have their place, but they obviously need to be put into context. OPS is a far more useful tool than just H, BB, or HR. Generally, players are more valuable when they excel in multiple areas.

3. Statistics that supposedly measure clutch performance are bull. They are quite often the result of pure coincidence. Bull should not enter into MVP voting.

4. Until baseball becomes a game where the perkiest team wins, as opposed to the team that scores more runs than their opponent, clubhouse leadership is a low-level tiebreaker.

The two best ways that I can think of to obtain a preliminary ranking for the MVP are to compare players' offensive winning percentage (OWP is a measure of how well a team would do with nine of that player in the lineup given average pitching and defense.) or to compare how a team with x player and 8 average major leaguers would do. Other methods would have to be used to measure pitchers, and if there is an obviously dominant pitcher a voter would need to find a way to compare him to the position player candidates.

I have been unable to find a description of the award provided to voters. If you know where I can locate this information or have a copy of it, please e-mail me (my address is at the bottom of all my columns). I would very much like to know if there is language within that description which might explain why the honor is not more frequently given to the most deserving candidate.

A Few Words on Bonds

In retrospect, Bonds appears lucky to have prompted intelligence in as many voters as he did. However, I do not want to let Chicago suck-up beat writers Teddy Greenstein and Mike Kiley slide. Not only did Bonds put up historic numbers in various categories, he ranked number one in OWP at .941, a good .060 higher than the number two Sosa, who only had an .881 OWP. I do not currently have a statistic to measure how a team with one Bonds and 8 average major leaguers would fare against a team of Sosa and 8 average major leaguers, however the results would likely also show Bonds' team with a better winning percentage than Sosa's. Sammy's only advantage over Bonds is that he played in seven more games. Barry Bonds unquestionably had one of the top ten offensive seasons of all time, and quite possibly the best ever. Shame on these two for even considering Sammy; they give Chicago a bad name.

A Disgrace

It appears that we won't have both MVPs on the free agent market this year, just the two players who deserved to be MVP. Jason Giambi was robbed of his award, albeit by a very exciting player.

Ichiro surprised many people with his overwhelming success playing Major League Baseball but he should not have been the 2001 AL MVP. He deserved the Rookie of the Year award and his Gold Glove (the man has a gun for an arm). Ichiro accomplished far more than would have been necessary to prove all the naysayers wrong although that does not mean that we owe him anything other than our respect. Regrettably, Ichiro Suzuki was likely given extra points in many writers' minds because of the unexpectedness of his performance, even above and beyond the quality of that performance. Meanwhile, Jason Giambi's previous MVP may have actually hurt his candidacy.

Right now, however, I do not want to dwell on how the voting resulted in this outcome, but on why it should have come out differently. As I suggested earlier, let us first compare OWPs. Giambi was first in OWP at .870, .062 above second place Jim Thome. Ichiro was 16th with a .688 OWP. Bret Boone, who had no business receiving first place votes, even had a better OWP, coming in 9th at .728. Even after we give Ichiro extra credit for his superb defense, there aren't many places where he can gain on Giambi. Both players perform in pitchers parks. And if you want to go there, Giambi is the definition of good clubhouse leadership.

Hopefully, future baseball historians will take the time to look at the details of the season when reviewing 2001, and not just notice that Ichiro won the AL MVP that year. Jason Giambi should have won his 2nd consecutive MVP this season. Here's hoping the A's give Giambi a contract reflecting his true worth, enabling him to stay in Oakland. I hear that's what he wants.