http://www.baseballwriters.org/awards/2007/2007_NL_mvp.html

Rollins
Holliday
Fielder
Wright
Howard
Chipper
Peavy
Utley
Pujols
HanRam

Tulo finished ahead of Braun, interestingly. Soriano got a third-place vote. Jose Valverde finished ahead of Miguel Cabrera, Jose Reyes, and Brandon Webb.

Generally awful.

Awful is right! Got to wonder who those guys are casting 8th-place votes for Prince and Wright...

The argument that the fact that a guy's team has to make the playoffs doesn't hold a lot of water considering that Ryan Howard won last year. There's just no rhyme or reason to how the writers determine their votes.

How could anyone vote Ordonez ahead of A-Rod? How did Pedro get left off 2 ballots in 1999? How did Beckett get left off some Cy Young ballots?

There's simply no explanation for some of the awful choices these writers make.

I'm OK with the top - Rollins is definitely deserving - Down the ballot I agree there are some questions - it's pretty tough to figure that Soriano was more valuable than Braun but I actually like seeing Rollins win as an all around player ahead of Holliday

VegasWatch came up with a MVP Prediction model that was presented at The Hardball Times a little bit ago:
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/whos-going-to-be-the-mvp/

What's great about it is how arbitrary the stats are. If THIS is the voters' line of thinking, then the award truly doesn't mean much.

I'd be interested in seeing who the baseball bloggers would've picked for each award. Maybe it's time to make a site for consolidating that and creating an award system for that. It'd be "unofficial" of course, but hey...it would be good to see who would get awards if the die-hard fans voted.

I can't believe Holiday didn't get it. He has all the stuff that usually gets the writers all hot and bothered:
1) Let the league in RBI
2) Led the league batting average
3) White hot at the end of the year (OPS 1.244, 30 RBI)
4) The best player on his team (Rollins normally would be considered the third best player on his team)
5) Holiday's team was playing the best at the end of the year

The story in the East was the Mets collapsed; the story in the west was the Rockies could not be denied.

I guess the East coast writers had a hard on for Rollins and didn't care if there was a better (by their standards) looking chick at the dance.

Devon, it's called the Internet Baseball Awards. Holliday won by a fairly strong margin, with the most firsts, most seconds, and seven short of the most thirds.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/other/iba2007/

How can the MVP winner have the 4th lowest OBP in the NL. I guess being an out factory is deemed valuable?

I have a suspicion that some of those ballots were mailed in before the final weekend of the season--it only would have taken a few to swing the vote.

Wright has Rollins beat 150 to 118 in adjusted OPS+, with very similar stolen base numbers--Rollins is a spectacular player in spite of his relatively low OBP, but if I was drafting a team I'd take Wright over Rollins in a heartbeat.

Why are any of you surprised. In the '40s the NY Dan Daniel controlled press did not give Ted Williams an MVP in either of his Triple Crown years.
In 1942, Joe Gordon led the AL in two categories, grounding into most DPs and most errors at 2B, yet Gordon won MVP over Williams' first Triple Crown. In 1947 2nd Ted Triple one writer hated Williams so much he didn't give Ted a vote from 1st to 10th & he lost by one point to DiMag's average season. Even a 10th place vote would have won it for Ted.
MLB should have ended MVP voting right then & there.

Don't forget 1941: Williams' signature season--.406/.553/.735, 235 OPS+--was only good enough for second place in the MVP race, thanks to the writers being mesmerized by Joe D's hitting streak.

Rollins wasn't the most valuable player on his team. Stupid writers.

I'm not a writer but I'm apparently stupid. I'd have voted for Rollins. OPS for Rollins on the road & Holliday on the road... the same. Rollins played great ss and ran the bases well. I'm not knockin' Holliday, he had a great year. It's very close. I thought Rollins was more 'Valuable'. When Hanley finally learns to play good 'D' it will be as a centerfielder. As to Prince... super power, great hitter, can't field, can't run & had the same number of extra base hits as... Rollins. OBP is not a minor thing & Rollins fell shy there. That's why it was close.

50 years from now, people will wonder how the heck Albert Pujols only won 1 MVP award. Gold gloves, too.

You have to play defense in baseball too- something Holliday can't do.

"50 years from now, people will wonder how the heck Albert Pujols only won 1 MVP award."

However unfairly, Albert's achievements seem to getting getting the needle discount. That said I can't blame anyone for averting their eyes re STL. It was a poor season on the field, far worse off it.

There's a long way to go in Albert Pujols' career. A-Rod lost a couple of MVPs he should have won, and he still has three.

OBP is important. However, JRoll's low OBP is off-set by the number of runs he scored. He had a terrific year. He was the straw that stirred the drink. Did not miss a game. Played well under pressure. (Hanley 28 ws-who cares, Marlins suck.)Sure, the mutts faltered. but the Phils excelled.

Jimmy Rollins had over 780 plate appearances and batted behind Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and a fine season by Aaron Rowand. How many runs would he have scored with an OBP .030 points higher? .050? Even Cesar Izturis would have scored 100 runs in Jimmy Rollins' shoes.

Snuffy, Rollins main competition might have been Matt Holliday, if the competition was for 7th most valuable player. There were a bunch of other guys who did more to help their teams win than Rollins and Holliday did. Mainly Wright, Pujols, Chipper, and Utley.

Just for a bit of Wednesday morning fun I crunched the Phillies numbers using Dave's lineup generator. Using the 2007 average position split from BR, the "best/worst lineup" differences between Rollins with a .344/.374/.394 are:

Best: 918/925/932 r/g, or 0/6.64/13.1 runs difference.
Worst: 828/839.6/845.6, or ~12/18 runs differnce.

So it looks like Rollins' poor plate discipline cost the team between one and two games over the course of the season.

(Ironically, if he had been a better season and the Phillies had overcome the mets earlier, he probably wouldn't have won the award because Holliday's story would have been so much more compelling...)

Forgot to mention that I averaged the DH, P and PH splits together for "pitcher".

You all, especially Sky, should become baseball writers. I mean, if the current writers are giving the NL MVP to what you say is the 7th best player in the NL, well then, take action!

re: jimmy rollins and why he won

everyone should save their breath and recognize why jimmy rollins won the mvp award and why albert pujols and matt holliday get no respect.

1) the media and writers are dominated by NYC and LA.

2) the phils play the mets 18 time a year.

3) the phils destroyed the mets and caused them to cave in from a 15 game lead to overhaul them and take the NL east pennant this year.

4) ergo, the NY writers not only had to vote for a Phillie for MVP, but they had to turn on their own team, thus denying David Wright his own constituency and votes from NY writers. NY writers must have been disgusted with David Wright for failing to win a pennant that was all but clinched on September 1. How could you give an MVP to a player who choked that badly, no matter what the sabrmetrics said? he's a loser, to say it simply. Rollins, on the other hand, said before the season he would beat the mets, and that's just what he did.

5) Colorado is a small market town. Colorado and Arizona made it to the NLCS and promptly recorded the lowest TV ratings of all time for an NLCS by several orders of magnitude. Philly and Houston by contrast are top 5 media markets. Colorado isn't in the top 25 media markets.

6) St. Louis is also a small media market.

7) Pujols and Holliday suffer due to the fact that a) they hit in known hitters parks and b) they are in small media markets.

8) Rollins benefits from the fact that he is on the east coast, and generally plays east coast teams.

9) Rollins has a great, great personality. He is about as pleasant and easy going as Ozzie Smith used to be, and he is always up and cheerful at all times.

10) Ryan Howard is pretty much the same way. Upbeat personality.

11) The Phillies press and Philly press, which are as negative as they get, have nothing bad to say about either Ryan Howard or Jimmy Rollins. They are universally liked by the fans and the press here. Pat Burrell, by contrast, is generally hated by both, because of the general perception that he doesn't work hard at his trade.

12) Jimmy Rollins is 5' 8" tall. If he isn't the Allen Iverson of baseball, who is? Since when do guys his size hit 30 homers? Or 40 doubles? or 15 triples? or 200 hits? or hit in nearly 40 straight games, as he did last year and the year before last? When you put it all together, Rollins is quite a good hitter.

13) Rollins' achievements are comparable to Phil Rizzuto's with the Yankees. Scooter didn't always get on base 100 walks a year either, but he was the glue that held the team together, and he had the magic personality. He was the baseball leader on the field.

14) Rollins has been the one constant on a Phillies team that has won 85 or more games each of the past five years.

15) Ryan Howard deserved the award last year over Pujols because 58 homers pack a lot more wallop with voters than another Albert Pujols all-around season. If Howard had been pitched to the last month of the season, Howard would have hit 75 homers last year.

16) Everyone in baseball recognizes that Howard was not on the juice. His award last year was in part to recognize Howard for setting a record for homers honestly and fairly, and not by cheating, as McGwire, Bonds and/or Sosa may have done. Ryan Howard was a celebration of honest old-fashioned hitting the fair and decent way. He had to be given the MVP award to reward honesty and decency in the league.

17) The NY and east coast writers have a sense of fairness and decency. They want to reward young kids who didn't grow up with steroids in the league like Ryan Howard or Jimmy Rollins.

18) These kids are decent and honest ballplayers and they didn't cheat to get their records or accomplishments.

--art kyriazis, philly