Unappreciated Man(ny)

I’ve got the most unappreciated player in baseball for you. He has a .327 batting average, 34 home runs, 99 RBI, and a 1.071 OPS through 118 games. His name has also been mentioned more in trade rumors than MVP talk in the past year. He is Manny Ramirez.

Here’s a great one for you. Manny has never won an MVP award. Shocked? So was I. How can a guy hit .333 with 44 homers and 165 RBI in 1999 and not win the Most Valuable Player Award? The winner that year, Ivan Rodriguez. He hit .332 with 35 homers and 113 RBI. How does that make any sense whatsoever? Sure, Pudge stole 25 bases that year, and was better defensively than Ramirez was, but the offensive numbers don’t even come close. Manny actually finished fourth that year. Behind future teammate Pedro Martinez and current teammate Roberto Alomar. To me, that is baffling. For the RBI’s alone Ramirez should have been rewarded. That was the 13th best single RBI season in baseball history, and it was the best since 1938. 1938!

The only other time he was that close was in 2004 when he finished third behind winner Vladimir Guerrero and runner up Gary Sheffield. The numbers in this race were pretty close; any of the three, plus David Ortiz who came in fourth, could have won.

Guerrero 39 HR 126 RBI .337 BA 15 SB
Sheffield 36 HR 123 RBI .290 BA 5 SB
Ramirez 43 HR 130 RBI .308 BA 2 SB
Ortiz 41 HR 139 RBI .301 BA 0 SB

The argument for this year is that these four players were so close (and Miguel Tejada, who drove in 150 runs for a bad Baltimore team that year came in 5th) yet Guerrero ran away with the voting, collecting 21 of the 27 first place votes, with five going to Sheffield and one a piece for Ramirez and Ortiz.

And this season it appears that Manny isn’t even on the MVP radar despite the numbers I listed above. On a recent ESPN nation poll they listed these players for the country to vote for: David Ortiz, Derek Jeter, Jermaine Dye, Jim Thome, and Joe Mauer. No Manny Ramirez to be seen. As a White Sox fan I love Jermaine Dye and Jim Thome, but Manny has better numbers than they do, sorry. Mauer has an incredible batting average (in the .350 - .360 range) but Manny is hitting right around .330 with far better power numbers than Mauer. The same can be said for Jeter, who has a high batting average, but not ridiculously higher than Ramirez. Should he be the 2006 MVP? No. Not now, he could have a huge September. My vote is for David Ortiz, but Manny should at least be considered. Put in the running. It’d be really funny if one of the best hitters of this generation, hell one of the best hitters of all time, never finished higher than third in the MVP vote.