Tainted MVP Balloting??

joestalin

I wasnt alive in the 40's or 50's so I didn't get to see Dimaggio and Williams and Mantle play but I just was
checking some stats on the MVP award through Williams career and I was blow away at what I saw. Again
you can't base an MVP on stats along but it seems like there was some sort of New York bias. By my calculation
Williams should have 4 more MVP's...take a look at the 4 years that Williams was second in the voting:

41 season

Dimaggio 541AB 193 hits 30 homers (yes 56 games)
Williams 456AB 185 hits 37 homers

42 season

Joe Gordon??? 538AB 173 hits 18 homers .322 avg
Williams 522AB 186 hits 36 homers .356 avg

47 season

Dimaggio 528AB 168 hits 20 homers .315
Williams 534AB 181 hits 34 homers .343

57 season

Mantle 474AB 173 hits 38 homers .365
Williams 420AB 163 hits 34 homers .388

and what is even more disturbing is in 1949 Williams won the MVP but Rizzuto got 5 1st place votes!!

Williams 566AB 194 hits 43 homers .343
Rizzuto 614AB 169 hits 5 homers .275

?????what???

Anyone remember these years? Maybe Im missing something here? Williams should have at least 2 more MVP's
based on these stats, and again I know stats aren't everything but dang!

Kevin

murcerfan

The bias being towards winners vs. losers

edited to say: for someone who blabbers on and on about championship rings, your post seems to lack much thought. If I'm not mistaking, the Yankees went to the World Series in each of your "case studies" .

1941- New York (101-53) finished with a 17 game lead over Boston to win the AL Pennant. Joe DiMaggio led the league with 125 RBI and was named AL MVP.

1942- The Yankees (103-51) returned to the World Series, winning the AL Pennant by 9 games over Boston. Tiny Bonham (father of Led Zepplin drummer Jon) of the Yankees finished with a 21-5 record.

1947- The New York Yankees (97-57) won the AL Pennant by 12 games over Detroit. The Yankees led the league with 794 runs and allowed only 568, the lowest in the league. The pennant run included a 19-game winning streak.
Joe DiMaggio hit .315 with 20 home runs and 97 RBIs. He was named the AL MVP. Tommy Henrich drove in 98 runs and Allie Reynolds led the pitching effort with a 19-8 record and 3.20 ERA. Joe Page was 14-5 with a 2.49 ERA and led the league with 17 saves.


Home runs and offensive power statistics meant much less before the ESPN "highlight reel" generation was born along with the narrow-minded thinking you always seem expert in illustrating

Hell, you probably still think Jeter is over-rated. I'm sure you even have a stat somewhere that backs your conclusion.

murcerfan

Of course the other side of the coin shines too

In 1941 Williams led the league with 37 homers, 145 bases on balls and a .735 slugging percentage. Despite all those gaudy statistics, the American League MVP award went to Joe DiMaggio, who had a record 56-game hitting streak.

The next year, Williams won the Triple Crown, leading the league with 36 home runs, 137 RBIs and a .356 average. But the MVP award went to Yankees second baseman Joe Gordon (.322, 18, 103).

The same thing happened in 1947, when Williams won his second Triple Crown by hitting .343 with 32 homers and 114 RBIs, but lost the MVP vote again to DiMaggio (.315, 20, 97).

By then, Williams' relationship with the writers, particularly in Boston, had deteriorated badly. One writer left him off the MVP ballot entirely in 1947, costing him the award.

Williams and DiMaggio were fierce competitors. Once in the fog of a crocktale party, they were nearly traded for each other so that the lefty-swinging Williams could benefit from the cozy right-field stands at Yankee Stadium and the right-handed DiMaggio could target the Green Monster at Fenway Park. The next morning, clearer heads prevailed and the deal was called off.

“He was the best pure hitter I ever saw. He was feared,” DiMaggio said in 1991, the 50th anniversary of Williams' .406 season and DiMaggio's hitting streak.

When DiMaggio died, in March 1999, Williams said there was no one he “admired, respected and envied more than Joe DiMaggio.”

edited to say: the triple crown is over-rated

aro13

joestalin - Although I do not agree with everything in the book you should read the Summer of 1949. It is a book about the Yankees and Red Sox fierce pennant race from that year.

In the Politics of Glory Bill James does a good job describing the MVP voting, "In 1941, of course, Williams hit .406, Dimaggio hit in 56 straight games, and the vote went to Dimaggio. It was a close vote that could have gone either way, and a good many Boston fans saw the result as having been unduly influenced by the New York press. Williams' overall numbers, interpreted on a superficial level, were clearly superior to Dimaggio's."

"In 1942 Williams won the Triple Crown, hitting .356 with 36 homers, 137 RBI. Joe Gordon won a triple crown of a different sort. He led the league in strikeouts, grounding into double plays and errors at second base - and won the MVP award. The contest stated a classic argument in its starkest form. In deciding the MVP award, or any other award, how much should playing for the winning team count? The Yankees had won the pennant but the Red Sox had finished in second, only nine games back. Should that carry more weight than Williams' triple crown?"

In 1947 "Williams hit .343 with 32 homers and 114 rbis; Dimaggio had not particularly good numbers by his own standards - .315 20 97. What everybody remembers is that one Boston writer left Williams entirely off the ballot...... What fans' don't remember about the 1947 MVP vote is that three writers left Joe DiMaggio entirely off their ballot, and three others had him eighth or lower."

As for your point about Yankee bias - Bill James talks about Phil Rizzuto and you might want to substitute the Yankees for Rizzuto:
"Rizzuto, you see, had a mystique, and this is the real core of the argument. Phil Rizzuto, for a generation of New York Sportswriters and New Yorkers in general, came to represent the subtle skills of a winning ballplayer. He became the symbol of his type. Within a certain circle, praising Phil Rizzuto was a signal that you really understood baseball, that you were among the cognoscenti. Speak up for Vern Stephens, and what you were saying was that you were a casual, ignorant fan, buffaloed by gaudy power statistics. Speak up for Rizzuto, and you were showing that you understood the fine points of the game. Rizzuto was Joe Dimaggio without the numbers...... and that's what this Phil Rizzuto for the Hall of Fame campaign is really about, you know. ..... It's power politics, and attempt by the tag end of the Dick Young/Roger Kahn generation of New York sportswriters to bully and intimidate those of us who are a little younger or who didn't grow up in New York into acknowledging the validity of their perceptions."
Probably the last sentence relates more than anything to your Yankee bias statement.

joestalin

man look at how defensive Murcerfan got! I think the Jets and Giants could use some of that defense! I guess
you have proved my point, sorry to bring up bad memories, I know all about the red sox yankee thing....Im
sure that it still burns that the greatest hitter of all time wasn't a Yankee but a Red Sox.

Im going to enjoy it this year when the Yankees get ousted from the playoffs by some team with a 4 million
dollar playroll!

Mays, Williams, Bonds.....three greats but none of them Yanks

DirtyHarry

There is more to the MVP than just the 3 measures used for the triple crown.... and of course, and to this day, the association with winning teams and some politics come in to play. IMO, Williams was definitely hosed in 1942. As far as the other years.....not necessarily so.

In their prime, both Joe D and Mantle were far superior fielders and baserunners than Williams. Their ability to play the field in (the then) cavernous dimensions of center field in NY was amazing and a huge contribution to the team's success. Before Mantle's leg was ripped apart by stepping in an open drain hole in the outfield at Yankee Stadium, he was the one of the fastest and most disruptive baserunners ever. Both he and Joe D also never made the mistake of spitting on the fans, or telling the sports writers to f-off.

I love Teddy Baseball for his mastery of the art of hitting and he is one of my all-time favorites. I support his comparisions vs Bonds as the greatest "hitter" of all time, but he can't shine Joe D's or Mantle's shoes when it comes to the full package in their prime years.

Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle.........no slouches at all compared to Williams, Mays or Bonds. Regards.

Axtell

I think the context of the award itself is what leads to so much debate. Is it the most potent offensive player, or the player who benefits his team winning the most? Unfortunately, it seems to leave out a lot of worthy candidates who are not on contenders. Arod broke that mold when he won with Texas, but how many MVPs would he have already had he had those seasons on a contender?

It's so difficult trying to prove an intangible like an MVP...most years there are several worthy candidates, but it usually boils down to which of those worthy players played on contenders.