EagleTribune.com : Blogs : Burt Talks Sports

I have to say this first. We here in New England are very unforgiving. A Boston Red Sox guy gets 16 first place votes, 6 second place votes, 4 third place votes and 1 fourth place vote to convincingly win the AL MVP.
And you know what we are focusing on? The lone guy who kept Dustin Pedroia off the ballot.
We are tough.
That being said, I want to throw in my two cents about the Dallas Morning News writer, Evan Grant, who didn’t have Pedroia in the top 10.
Grant’s explanation is not good. Not only did he say he had Pedroia and Carlos Pena see-sawing in that 10th spot, before going with Pena because he felt bad that the Rays didn’t have anybody in the top 10.
With no disrespect to Pena, who I believe probably deserved to be in the top 10 as well, Pedroia is at the very worst in the top five.
What I don’t like about the voting is the obsession with statistics. I don’t want to sound like a pro athlete, but you wonder if some of these guys know anything about baseball.
Grant calls batting average “over-rated,” which means he is a Bill Jamesian Guy. Sure, Pedroia didn’t have the RBI and HR of typical MVPs, he did own several categories (hits, doubles, runs and stolen base percentage). And lest we forget he was pretty darn good infielder (only six errors), too.
When I hear voters throwing around the alphabet categories (OBP and OPS) I start to get ill.
Sometimes, the stats don’t tell the entire story. Sometimes, a guy is a winner. Sometimes, guys make big plays in big situations in big cities.
Pedroia had a great season. Better yet, he didn’t come out of nowhere. He had a great season as a rookie, too.
But let’s be honest. He won the MVP award because no power hitter had a great year.
Still, voters like Grant give sportswriters a bad name.
I can hear it now, “Did he ever play a game in any sport outside of Little League?”
Grant has apparently apologized. But for what?