But many people, and not just Tigers boosters, want more. They want the whole enchilada. They want Justin Verlander to become the first starting pitcher to win an MVP since Roger Clemens a quarter-century ago.
I hate this. It’s a conversation we should not be having. Pitchers should be content with the Cy Young. And I’ll take it a step further. Relievers should not be eligible for the Cy Young. They should be competing for what I would call the Hoyt Wilhelm Award, a special prize for the best reliever of the year. This, by the way, would be a totally subjective award that would not be based simply on someone’s save total.
But let’s start with the pitcher MVP thing. I really don’t understand why anyone who loves baseball would even want to get into this discussion. If ever there was a clear apples-vs.-oranges issue, the idea of evaluating the contributions of an everyday player in comparison to the contributions of a starting pitcher, let alone a closer, is Exhibit A. Exhibit B would be the similar foolishness of attempting to make the same judgment with regard to a hockey position player and a goalie. In fact, that argument might even be more fruitless.
I will admit that pitchers were clearly viewed as viable MVP candidates when the current award was instituted by the Baseball Writers Association of America in 1931. The first American League winner was Lefty Grove, who had gone 31-4 with a 2.06 ERA and a WHIP (unknown at the time, of course) of 1.077 for the AL champion Philadelphia A’s. Between 1931 and 1945, nine pitchers divvied up 11 MVP awards, with Carl Hubbell (1933, 1936) and Hal Newhouser (1944, 1945) getting two apiece.
But over the next 11 years, only Jim Konstanty (NL, 1950) and Bobby Shantz (AL, 1952) won as pitchers. Something was in the air, and proof that people were reconsidering the process was offered in 1956 with the institution of the Cy Young Award, a clear indication that pitchers were to be regarded as a different species.
