I'm really getting tired of arguments about A-Rod deserving the MVP. This Jayson Stark article trys to make the case that a player on a losing team doesn't deserve the MVP award:

Of course it does. It tells us most of those voters also asked themselves our second question: Where would those teams have finished without those players?

If you ask that question about Alex Rodriguez, you know the answer. You know his team would have finished in exactly the same place without him as with him.

Last.

Of course, last is a relative term. If the Rangers had been in any other division in baseball, they would not have finished last. They did not have the worst record in the American League. Three teams had worse records. So without A-Rod, the Rangers would have been more like the Devil Rays than like the Angels, and which team would you rather watch?

What I really don't like about Jayson's argument is that if Texas had a good pitching staff, he would be voting for A-Rod. If Texas had the rotation of the A's or the Mariners or the Yankees, they would have contended in the West, and Stark would have no problem voting for A-Rod, even if his stats were exactly the same!

Stark doesn't say it directly, but he wants clutch players to win the MVP award:

OK, here's a little game for you. These are the stats of two top-five finishers in the MVP race after July 1. Which is which?

Player A: 27 HR, 67 RBI, 12 doubles, 4 triples, .642 slugging pct. Player B: 27 HR, 65 RBI, 17 doubles, 2 triples, .661 slugging pct.

Before we reveal the names, which would you vote for if we told you Player A's team was already 21 games out of first place -- and 15½ out of the wild card -- when that stretch began, while Player B's team was only 3½ of first and hanging onto the wild-card lead by 1½?

Well, Player A was Alex Rodriguez. Player B was Boston's David Ortiz. We're not suggesting that Ortiz is a better player than A-Rod, or that he's a clear-cut MVP, or that you ought to write in his name in your local presidential primary.

We're just suggesting there were players other than A-Rod who made a significant impact down the stretch on not just their own numbers, but on the pennant races. And that's what MVP's do.

"Impact down the stretch." So a guy who makes a significant impact April-June, puts his team up 20 games so they can coast can't win the MVP? I seem to remember a Tiger winning the MVP in 1984. All that team had to do down the stretch that year was show up.

The reason players on last place teams, or team with losing records seldom win an MVP is that bad teams seldom have great players. The failure of the Rangers to surround A-Rod with enough talent should not reflect badly on him. He was a deserving MVP candidate.