Prior to Monday, the vast majority of Tigers fans probably didn’t know who Jim Ingraham was.
That was until The News-Herald writer who happens to cover the Cleveland Indians left Justin Verlander off his ballot for AL MVP voting.
Ingraham’s actions mobilized Tigers as they took to Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms expressing their disdain for Ingraham. A few Detroit media outlets even broadcasted Ingraham’s email account which surely put a strain on his inbox.
However, Ingraham’s decision to leave Verlander off his ballot seemingly had nothing to do with the team he wrote for. Ingraham simply didn’t believe pitchers should be considered for the MVP Award.
The short version is I don’t believe pitchers should be eligible for the MVP Award.
My not voting for Verlander had nothing to do with evaluating what Verlander accomplished this season. It was one of the great seasons by any pitcher ever. Nobody has to convince me of Verlander’s greatness this season.
I cover the Indians, who are in the same division as the Tigers, so I’ve seen Verlander’s greatness first-hand.
He’s the only pitcher I saw this year who I felt had a legitimate chance to pitch a no-hitter every time he took the mound.
I know Verlander is a great pitcher. I also know, by the nature of his job, he did not appear at all in 128 of the Tigers’ games this year. That’s 79 percent of the Tigers’ season. I can’t think of any other sport in which a player who didn’t play in 79 percent of his team’s games could be voted the Most Valuable Player in his league.
Obviously, I’m in the minority in this year’s MVP voting. I expected to be. I’m sure many wonder why I didn’t at least have Verlander somewhere on my ballot — second, third, fourth — if not first. My answer to that is this: If Verlander was going to be on my ballot at all, he was going to be first.
But once I decided I didn’t think it was fair to compare pitchers with position players for this award, meaning I wasn’t going to give Verlander a first-place vote, it would have been hypocritical of me to have him anywhere else on my ballot.
He was either going to be first on my ballot or not on it at all.
On his own personal level he certainly isn’t wrong in his decisions. It’s not like he had Verlander third, fourth or even fifth on his ballot and it’s not like he had any other pitchers like Jered Weaver or C.C. Sabathia present with Verlander left off. It was his own personal belief that pitchers simply shouldn’t get the MVP Award.
But does his reasoning necessarily justify ALL pitchers, including Justin Verlander being left out of the MVP discussion?
I don’t think so.
Ingraham attempted to justify his decision by stating that Justin Verlander only appeared in 34 games for the Tigers this season which equaled about to about 21 percent of the Tigers’ games as a whole. Now in comparison to the starting pitcher, Ingraham says that position players have to be physically and mentally prepared to perform at a high level in 140 or more games per season.
It’s not a bad argument for position players and in fact it’s an argument I use myself when debating whether or not teams should trade away top talent for starting pitching.
However in Verlander’s case the argument doesn’t hold water.
First off, it’s true that Verlander only appeared in about 21 percent of Tigers games this season. But that number is very misleading.
Let’s use the runner-up to the AL MVP award this year as an example.
Jacoby Ellsbury appeared in 158 total games for the Boston Red Sox this season and had 729 plate appearances. With that said though, Ellsbury only had 388 putouts meaning that he was involved in just about 388 plays in the field for 2011. If you want to break that down even further, Ellsbury played in a total 1358.1 innings during 2011 and on average was involved in 3.5 plays per half inning.
Now I’m not taking anything away from Ellsbury, I’m simply using him to compare the position player to a dominant starting pitcher.
And speaking of that dominant starting pitcher, namely Justin Verlander, let’s take a look at his statistics for 2011. Yes Verlander only appeared in 34 games for the Tigers which isn’t comparable at all to Ellsbury’s 158 on the surface. However again when you break that down, Verlander pitched a total 251 innings and faced a total of 969 batters.
What this essentially means is Verlander had roughly a direct impact on 969 plays for the Tigers in 2011. Plays which could’ve met runs scored for the opposition or outs for the Tigers.
Now when you add up Ellsbury’s total plate appearances (729) and putouts (388) he had roughly 1,117 plays in which he was directly involved in.
Sure 1,117 plays obviously outweighs the 969 for Verlander however the numbers are a lot more closer than the 158 games played for Ellsbury to the 34 games played for Verlander. Furthermore, you add the fact that Verlander won the pitching triple crown this season and was a huge factor for the Tigers in terms of stopping losing streaks.
Suddenly the Verlander choice for MVP seems more justifiable than Ingraham’s making it out to be.
Not to mention, good and responsible starting pitchers should be preparing themselves mentally each game as they study the opposition. If you don’t believe this ask Jon Lester, John Lackey and Josh Beckett how that chicken and beer tasted in the clubhouse when they should have been in the dugout scouting their own opponents for the stretch run.
Ref: The News-Herald, Baseball-Reference.com, FoxSportsDetroit.com (image)
