Rays Game MVP Weekly Recap

The first week of voting for the MVP of each Rays victory is in the books, and now we can dish out the game ball awards. If you need a refresher, check out the primer article for this series here. Let’s take a look at the polls and tally up the results.

The Polls

There were some good performances on Opening Day, but none like Chris Archer’s. 222 votes for the inaugural poll was also nice to see, so thank you all for that!

Alex Cobb admittedly didn’t have his best stuff for his first start of the season, but he looked far better on the mound than last year when he was coming back from Tommy John Surgery. A good Cobb back in the rotation makes the Rays so much better.

This one actually ended with a score of 10-8, so my bad on that. The poll went down to the wire between Dickerson and Colome. In the end, all of that offense was great but the fans decided the team needed a clean inning at the end of the game the most.

At the time of writing, this poll has 7 hours left but Mallex Smith is running (pun?) away this one. I will adjust next week’s tally if it changes, but I don’t see that happening. Nothing against Archer, he had another great night for his second start on the season. Mallex was just on another level. I couldn’t fit all the great things he did in this game into the twitter poll (an issue I’m running into a lot lately). By Win Probability Added (WPA), Mallex accounted for half the value of the win on the day all by himself at .510 WPA. He is an absolute game changer when he’s on base.

The Results

So now I have to run some numbers and do some tough math to tally up the number of game balls each player has won on the season. We have a four way tie after the first week (shocker!):

Chris Archer - 1

Alex Cobb - 1

Alex Colome - 1

Mallex Smith - 1

Who would have guessed after the first week, Mallex Smith would have a game ball but Evan Longoria wouldn’t? Corey Dickerson also just missed out on two game balls in the week. His time will come.

This is fun! Thank you all for contributing and making the series successful.