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You think it's easy to be a most valuable player voter? Really? Try it some time. If you take this job seriously, if you're open-minded, if you do what you're supposed to do -- namely, consider everything and everybody -- it's actually about as easy as splitting an atom in your basement. With a salad fork. I can tell you all about it, first-hand, because I'm a National League MVP voter this year. So in case I'd forgotten just how many brain cells I can deep-fry trying to do this right, this year's fun-filled debate is doing a terrific job of reminding me. Should I vote for Clayton Kershaw, even though he's (gasp) a pitcher? Should I vote for Giancarlo Stanton, even though (shudder) his team doesn't even have a winning record? Should I vote for Andrew McCutchen, a guy who told me last week he isn't even the MVP (what?!) of his own team? Or should I vote for someone else entirely -- a Jonathan Lucroy, a Buster Posey, an Anthony Rendon? Every time I think I'm starting to figure this out, I can hear the voices, and see the tweets, of all the 8.7 gazillion people who are guaranteed to disagree with me. And because I already know exactly why they'll be calling me an idiot, I'm going to answer some of those cool, calm, respectful complaints right now. I'm helpful like that. So here goes: Cool, calm, respectful complaint No. 1: How the heck could you vote for a starting pitcher for MVP? Why, thank you for your cool, calm, respectful question. Let the record show that I haven't decided yet whether to cast a first-place vote for Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw. But I know, with my customary psychic powers, precisely what I'd hear if I did. In fact, I've already heard it. "It's not like a position player can win the Cy Young," McCutchen said. "We have our own award," said Curt Schilling, who, as you might recall, used to pitch for a living. "He's going to win an award," Stanton's general manager in Miami, Dan Jennings, said of Kershaw. "He's going to win the Cy Young. That's the award he should win. Is he tremendous? Record-setting? Bob Gibson? Yes, yes and yes. But he still only works every fifth day. And there's no way you can justify the value of playing every fifth day versus every day." OK, I get the idea. But now here's the deal: You can justify it. You can even quantify it, with the wins above replacement stat. Which tells us that Kershaw (8.0) has been worth at least 1.5 more wins than any NL position player You can also look at actual facts that tell you Kershaw has had an incredible impact on his team beyond every fifth day. The Dodgers are an incredible 21-4 when he starts, and only three games over .500 when anyone else starts. So they're officially just another team without him. And Kershaw has been so dominating, for so many innings, that his bullpen amigos could go work on their tans on the beach in Santa Monica most days he pitches. In his past 12 starts, Dodgers relievers have had to pitch a total of 10 innings. And relievers other than the closer, Kenley Jansen, have had to pitch a total of only three innings. So the ace has a massive effect on three games' worth of bullpen use, out of every five, if you think it through. We also now have specific instructions -- which were added to our ballot package after 1999's Pedro Martinez voting debacle -- which tell us, unequivocally: "Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, including pitchers and designated hitters." So even though McCutchen argued, passionately, that trying to compare hitters who play every day to pitchers who pitch every fifth day "is like apples and oranges," and there should really be a Babe Ruth Award, or something like that, just for hitters, that's not going to happen -- not in the next week, anyway. Which means we're going to have to weigh every apple and every orange. And if you're rational about this, said Kershaw's GM, Ned Colletti, you should know you can't weigh all seasons on the same scale. "Sometimes, you've got to look through another window," Colletti said. "And when you look through that window at this guy, you say, 'Wow.' . . . I'm someone who typically believes the Cy Young is the pitchers' MVP award, in most years. So to have a pitcher win the MVP, it takes an exception to the standards pitchers are typically measured by. Well, if you look at the season this guy's had, it's exceptional." OK, he's right. But this is one of those arguments in which everybody is "right." Doesn't matter who's right. What matters is, we're allowed to vote for pitchers. So no whining if we do. Got it? Cool, calm, respectful complaint No. 2: Oh yeah? Then how can you vote for a starting pitcher who also spent 41 days on the disabled list? Hmmm. Good point, actually. Here's one thing I've never figured out: How come Stanton's injury was supposed to end his MVP chances? And how come McCutchen's injury was supposed to finish his chances? But we should apparently overlook Kershaw's long stint on the DL because it came in April, not August and/or September? Why? Here's some stuff every voter should know while contemplating Kershaw's MVP case: • No MVP in history ever spent 41 consecutive days on the disabled list, as Kershaw did from March 26 to May 6. The most days missed is 37, by Joe Mauer, at the start of the 2009 season. George Brett was another week back, missing 30 days in a row in 1980. • Most likely, Kershaw is only going to make 27 starts this season. And no starting pitcher has ever won an MVP award while appearing in that few games. Fewest starts ever by an MVP starter: 30, by Lefty Grove in 1931 and Spud Chandler in 1943 -- before the Cy Young Award even existed. So we should all remember that. April counted, too. On the other hand, Kershaw probably deserves credit for finding a way to be insanely dominating anyway. Among other things, he could turn out to be the first pitcher ever to lead his league in wins while spending a month on the disabled list. Amazing. That tells us he has crammed a lot of domination into an unusually small window, even for a starting pitcher. But it doesn't tell us whether we should be voting for a guy who will wind up not playing in 135 of his team's 162 games. Cool, calm, respectful complaint No. 3: C'mon, how could you vote for Miami's Stanton? The guy probably won't even play a game in the last 2½ weeks. First reaction: And that's his fault? How, exactly? He got hit in the face by a baseball. How can you deduct MVP points for something like that? Cruel. Second reaction: Then again, I'll concede that in "normal" cases, you can't have a true MVP season unless you finish it. And there is massive evidence that bears that out. Elias tells us that there has never been an MVP who didn't play at all after Sept. 11, which was the day Stanton got hurt (although Josh Hamilton came close in 2010, missing virtually the whole month but returning to play in the final three games). But to hold that against this man is absurd. He'd played in every game to that point -- all 145 of them. I count 34 position players through the years who played fewer games and won an MVP award anyhow. So this should be a non-argument. Judge Stanton by the games he played, not the games he didn't play, through zero fault of his own. Cool, calm complaint No. 4: Yeah, but he also played for a team with a losing record, a team that was two games under .500, 12 games out of first place and 4.5 out of the wild card at the time he got hurt. So how could he be the MVP? This is really the crux of this argument. How do we accurately measure Stanton's "value" for this particular team? Well, there are lots of innovative thinkers out there who believe we shouldn't even include a team's record in the MVP discussion. I'm not in complete agreement with that. But in Stanton's case, I'll ask this: Did he play a single "meaningless" game the entire season? Answer: No. Not one. So it's unfair to penalize him in any way, I think, for playing on a team that didn't get to October. I also know that under "modern" MVP voting conditions -- meaning the 37 years since 1967, when there have been both MVPs and Cy Youngs in each league -- there's almost no precedent for a position player who was having a year like Stanton losing the MVP award to a pitcher. Here's one way to look at that. At the time he got hurt, Stanton was leading his league in slugging, OPS, home runs, extra-base hits and RBIs. And since 1967, there have been 17 players who led their league in all of those categories. All but two of them won the MVP award. And only Willie McCovey lost to a pitcher (Bob Gibson, in his surreal 1968 season). So what you have to weigh: Is Kershaw's season so Gibson-esque that it trumps all that Stanton (and every other candidate) did? There's an overwhelming case that it is, clearly. But . . . There have been five other starters since 1967 whose teams had a winning percentage in their starts even higher than the Dodgers' .840 winning percentage in Kershaw's starts. None of those five won an MVP award (see chart). Kershaw also has an incredible adjusted ERA-plus of 210, meaning he has basically been more than twice as good as an average starter. But Pedro Martinez had four seasons with a better ERA-plus and didn't win an MVP. Greg Maddux had two and didn't win an MVP. Dwight Gooden put up a 229 in 1985 and didn't win the MVP. And what that reminds us is that, no matter how overwhelming any pitcher's season is, history shows us that pitchers normally don't win unless there's no position player having a legit MVP-type season to vote for. Well, this year there is. And guess what? Stanton isn't the only one. Let's not overlook the defending MVP, some guy named McCutchen. Cool, calm, respectful complaint No. 5: Wait. How can you vote for a guy who says he's not even the MVP of his own team? Shoot. I was afraid you'd ask that. McCutchen did in fact say last week that Josh Harrison is actually the Pirates' MVP. Why? How? Because "he's been everything for us," McCutchen said. "He's like the hyena of our team. He eats up anything that needs to be eaten up. You need someone to cover third base, or shortstop, or the outfield? He steps in. If you need something, he's there." Um, you know what? Josh Harrison has been great. But he's not the Pirates' MVP, or the MVP of the National League. McCutchen, on the other hand, might be. The MVP, Pirates GM Neal Huntington said, "is that player who, if you take him out of the lineup of a contending team, everything changes. And to me, that's Andrew McCutchen. I still believe Andrew's impact on us has been bigger than last year." McCutchen, in fact, has a higher slugging percentage, better OPS, more home runs and a better OPS-plus than he had last season -- while playing in tremendous pain, by the way. And what's even more notable is that he, not Stanton, leads the league in both OPS-plus and offensive wins above replacement. And guys who do that, on winning teams, almost always win MVP awards. Since 2001, there have been nine men who led their league in OPS-plus for teams that went to the postseason. Seven of them got MVP trophies out of it. And there have been 11 players since then who led their league in offensive WAR for teams that reached the postseason. Nine of those 11 won MVPs. When you take defense into account, McCutchen actually drops nearly a full run behind Stanton in total wins above replacement (at 5.5). But the point is, he has a more compelling case than he seems to be getting credit for. The trouble is, is it more compelling than Clayton Kershaw's? Is it more compelling than Giancarlo Stanton's? That's what all of us misguided MVP voters have to decide in the next week and a half. Come to think of it, I might rather split that atom.
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