The Rays Tank: MVP Edition

If you were off living in a hole somewhere and missed the news, the league MVP awards were announced yesterday. There were no surprises on either side as Miguel Cabrera and Buster Posey won easily. Cabrera winning wasn't a surprise, but the margin of victory was. He collected 22 of the 28 first place votes. There was so much debate from August until the end of the season concerning him and Mike Trout that you'd have thought it would have been closer. Trout would have been the choice of most in the sabermetric community, but the Triple Crown was too much for him to overcome.

With Posey winning in the National League, and Tim Beckham playing in the Arizona Fall League, Rays fans can't be too happy. Not though Posey hasn't been excellent for three years now, but the MVP is the icing on the cake. He won in a landslide over Ryan Braun, who actually had a better season than last year when he won the award.

Lets take a look at some of the stranger MVP votes cast this year. Hunter Pence and Angel Pagan each got a 10th place vote. Craig Kimbrel finished 8th, ahead of any starting pitcher. Raul Ibanez got a 10th place vote. That same voter put Jim Johnson third and Derek Jeter fifth, but left off Robinson Cano entirely.

As far as the Rays go, David Price finished 12th, Fernando Rodney 13th, and Ben Zobrist 18th.

Links:

-Over at FanGraphs, Dave Cameron explains the stupidity of the "Player X's team made the playoffs and Player Y's didn't, so Player X is more valuable" argument.

-The video of Manny Ramirez homering in his first at bat, on the first pitch, of the Dominican Winter League is great on so many levels.

-As if Seattle wasn't great enough for you to visit before this, the Mariners are installing a video screen TEN TIMES bigger than their current one at the cost of $10 million.