I was proud to learn on Monday that the San Francisco Giants' Barry Bonds won his fifth MVP award. In winning the National League Most Valuable Player award, Bonds set another array of records. As he won last year and in 1992 and 1993, Bonds became the first player in history to win the award in back-to-back years twice, although that fact is rather redundant as while Bonds has won the award five times, no other player in history has won the MVP more than three times.

The only blight on the day was that Bonds really should be putting his seventh MVP trophy in storage rather than just his fifth. He should be working a three-peat following a four-peat from 1990-1993. Bonds finished second to teammate Jeff Kent in 2000, when had he behaved more sociably to the press he likely would have finished first as he deserved. I was not following the situation as closely in 1991, but I believe that he rightfully should have won that award as well.

Fortunately, unlike last season, all of the 32 voters recognized his excellence, placing him first on the ballot for a unanimous win. Bonds is the fourteenth player to receive such a landslide.

Just to highlight a few of his accomplishments this season, Bonds hit .370, winning the first batting title of his career. Additionally, he had 149 H, 31 2B, 2 3B, and 46 HR with a 198:47 BB:K and 9/11 SB% in 403 AB for a .582 OBP and .799 SLG. At 38, the 6'2", 228 lb left fielder is still going strong, and I expect similar results from him again next season, barring a more serious injury than the hamstring troubles he experience this year.

While we're quite pleased with the top placement, which is of course the most important, the rest of the list went less to our satisfaction. Voters submit a ranked list of 10 players from which the votes are tallied. Below is a table comparing Rotohelp's picks to those actually voted in the top 10.

BBWAA				Rotohelp
1.  Barry Bonds, OF-L		1.  Barry Bonds, OF-L
2.  Albert Pujols, CR-R		2.  Randy Johnson, LHP
3.  Lance Berkman, OF-S		3.  Brian Giles, OF-L
4.  Vlad Guerrero, OF-R		4.  Jeff Kent, 2B-R
5.  Shawn Green, OF-L		5.  Vlad Guerrero, OF-R
6.  Jeff Kent, 2B-R		6.  Curt Schilling, RHP
7.  Randy Johnson, LHP		7.  Lance Berkman, OF-S
8.  John Smoltz, RHP		8.  Jim Edmonds, OF-L
9.  Sammy Sosa, OF-R		9.  Chipper Jones, OF-S
10. Curt Schilling, RHP		10. Albert Pujols, CR-R

As I've stated when discussing our picks for Rookie of the Year and Cy Young, we rely on Value Over Replacement Player(VORP) to form a preliminary ranking, making only small adjustments to form our final list.

Of course, the relievers once again were the most unqualified players on the list using our evaluation methods. I find it somewhat amusing that Smoltz finished below Schilling in the Cy Young Voting but above him for the MVP. Although there is a slight chance that separate writers vote on the different awards, I believe it is the same group. If anyone has more detail on this topic, I'd be interested in the information.

Among the other players that received votes and were not in our top ten, Benito Santiago was by far the least deserving. Most of the others at least ranked in the top 30, while Helton, Oswalt, Sosa, Vidro, Walker, and Green were right there with the end of the pack.

The only place in our list where we strayed from a straight VORP ranking was in placing Pujols tenth. He fell just slightly behind Todd Helton and Roy Oswalt, but we gave him an edge for position flexibility.

You might ask who cares about the rest of the list after the first place finisher? However the matter is quite important, if only because it affects bonuses in the contracts of many players and is used to promote or criticize players in contract negotiations.

I haven't bothered to discuss any of our pre-season predicted award winners in the past, but if you'd like you can take another look at that article. Interestingly, while we projected Bonds to have another stellar home run season, we had OF-R Sammy Sosa taking the MVP, in large part because we didn't think the Giants would make the playoffs and the voters put a lot of uncalled for value on the success of a candidate's team.

We did have Bonds finishing second, though we thought Chipper Jones would have a more successful and publicized season and finish third. Of those we thought would finish in the rest of the top ten (Gary Sheffield, Randy Johnson, 1B-L Ryan Klesko, OF-L Luis Gonzalez, Todd Helton, Shawn Green and Vladimir Guerrero), Johnson and Guerrero deservingly finished in the top ten and only Klesko and Gonzalez failed to receive any votes.