Fire Gardy

I’ve talked a good amount of shit about Dave Cameron and his Neyer-esque hatred of the Twins over the years, but he’s not totally blind. When someone — even a Twins player — has an absolutely historic season and is far and away the obvious choice for MVP, he believes that person should, you know, win the MVP. Today he wondered how in the world someone voted for Miguel Cabrera for MVP over Mauer:

Seriously, there is no argument for a first place vote for Miguel Cabrera. Mauer’s team made the playoffs, beating out Cabrera’s team for the last spot. Mauer hit better. Mauer fielded better. Mauer played a more important position.

None of those facts are disputable. A vote for Cabrera being more valuable in 2009 is like a vote for the sum of two and two being five. It’s not an opinion – it’s a lack of understanding.

And as you all probably know, I agree with him. Personally, I debated putting Cabrera somewhere on my ballot, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it; he was essentially the same player as Teixeira and Youkilis this year, and I had them at 9 & 10, respectively. I can easily see an argument for having him in the top 10 … but I simply can’t see how he can be #1 over Mauer, or Zobrist, or Jeter, or Greinke, or Longoria.

Of course, Cameron wasn’t necessarily defending Mauer. Instead, he’s taking up the torch in the ongoing battle between old media and new media:

So, writers who criticized Law for his vote and pointed to it as evidence that he’s screwing up the process, you are hereby required to do the same thing to the Cabrera voter. At least Keith had a reasonable explanation for his vote. There is no reasonable explanation for a Miguel Cabrera first place MVP vote. It’s just stupidity on display.

I like that battle as much as the next guy, I guess. But I don’t think Keizo Konishi should lose his BBWAA voting rights because of this*, just like I don’t think Keith Law should have lost his vote because he didn’t go with the crowd on a particular vote.

* On the other hand, it’s worth pointing out that Miguel Cabrera got a $200K bonus for getting that single first place vote. That’s nothing for Cabrera and his $152M contract; it’s a whole hell of a lot for some nearly-anonymous sportswriter that even Dave Cameron — a Seattle-based blogger/fan — has never heard of. If it turns out that that had anything to do with it, well, then Konishi should absolutely lose his vote. But there’s no reason to suspect that right now.

So let’s all just relax, and not get too worked up about the fact that Mauer got only 27 of 28 first place votes. The voters didn’t blow this one.