 It's kind of like should be on the same level as the Cy Young but because they refuse to establish what the MVP is and that pitchers can win the MVP it makes it bigger than the Cy Young. It should just be the best hitter in baseball like it's weird that we have like the best pitcher in the leagues but we don't have the best offensive player or like you know field player in the league. Yeah they we've done this a little bit before it should be two wards it should be best player in MVP that would make it a lot more fun. Like I do like the Silver Slugger and Gold Glove stuff because I think that's a interesting way to give out some some merits to different dudes if you're a fielding specialist or a hitting specialist but yeah it's and you know what kind of has ruined this is war wins above replacement like that that stat was made up to kind of show a player's value and people have looked at that and been like oh well that player had the most value this year so yeah you kind of screwed us on that one war. Let's do the NL first your NL MVP is Cody Bellinger Cody Bellinger come on down he's a pretty good NL MVP though I mean the Dodgers had a really good regular season he went nut job for most of it it would have been fun to see Yelich finish the season but once Yelich got knocked out and Milwaukee did pretty good without him it was kind of bellies. Yeah but I saw something that was Yelich missed the last two weeks right? I want to say it's closer to three. Okay three weeks if he missed the first three weeks would it have counted against him in the same manner that's what I saw and I thought I was an interesting point. Not the same manner but you know I think your counting stats and stuff like that are impacted but again that's where it's another gray area with MVP. Dude Cody Bellinger's so young he's 23 years old. Yeah yeah he's really good. Do you think I didn't realize he was that young? If the Brewers played like shit without Yelich does he win the MVP? That's interesting so if he gets hurt in the Brewers the Brewers blew it does he get more votes? Could be because you can say look what they did without him he carried that team. Right and now there's probably some dumb people saying like look how good they did down the stretch without him. Yeah so the games. What the hell is this? Oh I have this wrong. I have Yelich's career versus Bellinger's last season. Ooh love it. It's not fair. So Bellinger played 26 more games. I mean that's almost a full month. Yeah. Jakey Math. Good job. Almost a full month. We had more played appearances. Yelich had a higher OPS. A higher slugging. A higher on base percentage. A higher batting average. More total or no not more total. No counting stat he's gonna win. A higher OPS plus. Did all the NL awards? He only had three less home runs in Bellinger. Yeah this was Yelich's to win easy if he didn't miss three weeks. Did the NL blow all their awards with injuries? Like Tatis was neck and neck for rookie of the year. He gets hurt. Yelich had like a mini leg up on Bellinger for the MVP and then Cy Young like Scherzer had a good chance. He got hurt. Ryu got hurt and had a little slump. Like I know you kind of blew it this year. Damn. Dude I'm happy for Bellinger. I think he's a deserving MVP winner. So I'm not trying to knock him at all. He had a fucking fantastic season. But Yelich had him in a lot of these categories. I didn't realize that if he didn't get hurt and he stayed true to how he was playing for the next three weeks it was Yelich's easily. So that injury really hurt him. Yeah that'll be that'll be an interesting week of this offseason or spring training when dude Yelich's numbers are like silly. They're Barry Bond stuff. So that'll be fun. It'll either be like this right before the start of the season or a boring week of the offseason where someone's like hey Christian Yelich is a real Barry Bond. A real Barry Bonds. So you want him to take steroids. No. I just don't know what you meant by it. All right. So Jim here's where it gets fun. So you'll you'll appreciate this. Well actually no you do have one asshole you have to find. OK. Somebody gave Cody Bellinger a fifth place MVP vote. Everything else was first or second. Someone gave him a fifth place. Like yeah. Like that dude should be in trouble. You fucked up. Someone gave him a fifth. It looks like you get to vote on top 10. So the other ones I had. Yes. So who gave him a fifth. Here it is. Tracey ring a ring go. Oh no. Ringo lost G. Ringo lost G. From Colorado. He had Rendon Freeman Aronato and Gellich above Belanger. So he had Yelich for and Belanger five. Yeah. I mean you got to lose your vote for that. Dude he's the only one that didn't have Belanger or Yelich. Dude why are such bit. So why are not all of them. Obviously 99 percent of baseball writers aren't assholes but why are there like these assholes that get votes. So you know what it's not Belanger or Yelich. People are not even top three. Go fuck yourself. You're wasting your vote. Yeah. Yeah that's like Yelich had one fourth place vote and it's that person that sucks. So Rendon had the majority of the third place votes. He had 24 of them. Kettle Marta finishes fourth. We made some Kettle Marta jokes as the season went on. He had a crazy year. If you're a stats geek go look up it. Go look at it. His season Akuna finishes fifth. Aronato six. John this is this is the one that had the NL talking because you're right. I mean when there's 10 votes you know you're going to have people that sneak in a Yosemite Grandel or a Strasburg or you Henio Suarez for the Reds had four 10th place votes. The one that had everyone talking yesterday Jim Kevin Pilar. You got a vote. Kevin Pilar got one 10th place vote for the National League MVP for his 719 OPS season with a 259 batting average and a 287 on base percentage. Like like that's brutal and I don't know man. Look at that guy's ballot and let's look at if he did everything else good then I'll be like OK you don't get a one point oh war. OK let's look at the rest of his ballot and see how he did otherwise a 293 on base percentage. Jake if he did everything else fine I'm fine with him fucking around with his 10th place vote. OK that's fair. He had his name is Henry Shulman from the San Francisco Chronicle which is Pilar's team. Right. He had Bellinger one Yelich two. Yep. Rendon three all day. Marta four. Uh huh. Freeman five. OK. Alonso six. Yeah. Aronato seven. Yeah. Soto eight. OK. Acuna nine. Yeah. Polar 10. I like it. I'm not dunce in them. What I'm saying here is I want this to be the future. I want the top nine guys you have to take very seriously. And then that 10th guy you just give it to who you like the most. Like I'm wondering does Kevin Polar have something in his contract if he gets an MVP vote he gets 100 K. And he threw this rider like 10 K. He's like hey just give me your 10th place vote. That'd be awesome. I mean that that feels like a no brainer. OK. Well maybe Trevor Story has that he got a one vote a 10th place vote. Trevor got a lot of votes when he got one 10th place vote. Two. But he also got two six place votes. Suarez got some votes. Suarez yeah Colton Wong was the other one. He got two 10th 10 spotters. Goldschmidt had one a three you had one seventh. Yeah. I don't know. It's a it's a solid list. The Kevin Polar that's a that'll that'll be a running baseball nerd joke for the next year or so. I'm happy for Polar. And I'm not giving him my dummy suspension the voter either. OK. That's fine. Who cares about that. Good job. Did can one of my I'm assuming yes. And that's part of the reason he got this vote. Can one of my one of my Giants followers or listeners reach out and tell me if Polar still plays like a cool center field. Why wouldn't he because I think them. Well I think the metrics are starting to fall off and he's getting a little older. I mean he's 30 years old. So I don't know. Just curious. Well do you still play a center or good center field. We're going to find out soon. I think. All right. The A. L. M. V. P. was an interesting one because you had trout who got hurt. Similar to Gellich. You had Braggman who's amidst the scandal right now. Which doesn't come into play at all. Obviously. And then you know who like I'm going to be honest here. Simeon just doesn't have the name or the campaign is kind of a two man race. I haven't looked at the voting though. So yeah. So break out anything interesting. We've got good news. Jen trout and Braggman got all first place and second place votes. Oh we got no ass no assholes. That's fantastic. Trout trout 17 first Braggman 13 and then vice versa for second place. Simeon had the majority of the third place votes. He had 22. La Mayhew had six. He ends up finishing fourth. Simeon Simeon's a really interesting one because he he played a really good short stop and he had a really good year with the bat. That's kind of one of those mental mind fucks a little bit because I think when you think of Oakland's lineup you think of Matt Chapman and Matt Olson first. But Simeon did have a really really good year by a lot of advanced metrics to let's see La Mayhew Bogart. He had a big year. There's Matt Chapman George Springer who if he had the full year he would have had an interesting case. Mookie Betts finishes which I don't Jim our guy Jeff Jeff Pat is it Passon or Passon. I would say Passon. Let's go. Passon. That's how close we are with them. Got to figure that out before winter meetings. He had Mookie like fourth. He had La Mayhew like eighth and and that one's kind of tough for me as a Yankee fan but I'll try to keep my bias out of it but DJ La Mayhew was so good and so solid for this whole season and it felt like Mookie was gone for like not gone but he wasn't MVP Mookie Betts for half the year. But DJ is not going to get like if you look at MVP as the best player in baseball he's not going to get those votes. If you look at it as most valuable to your team he should get those but not have very split and how you look at it. I would counter you with like we we saw it this year and I living in Denver I had a lot of my my Rockies fans and sports writers bumping me and being like yo you like it. He's nice. It's like yeah but remember we we had the whole stretch where David Cohen said it that DJ La Mayhew looks little league out there that he's just the best player on the field. And I don't know I mean this is part of the problem and why Kevin Pilar got a vote is that when you do watch a guy every day sometimes you do get blindsided by whatever you're thinking a little bit. So I don't know. I mean it's six one way half dozen the other in the end. I'm trying to see if there's any standouts. So Garrett Cole finishes one two three four five six eight Garrett Cole finishes 10th in the MVP voting Verlander 11th. How about that. That's what whatever it doesn't really matter. But I mean OK. Well if you wanted to make that case Cole one more like more the game team one more when Cole was on the mound so MVP but then decide that's all right. That's baseball baby. Couple. Is there any is there any weird. So Boston Ryder voted Bogarts third. The only third the only third place vote was from a Boston Ryder. So hometown love there. Yeah. And I'm I don't know. I mean he had a good enough year that if you throw him in with La Mayhew and Simeon it's close but yeah that's that's a homer vote. Justin Verlander had one third place vote. Let's see who are who are our wildcards at the bottom. Jorge Soler gets a 10th place vote but I love that because he had a big year like knock yourself out Royals Ryder that put that in Detroit Ryder put in. Oh how about that. Well yeah Detroit. There's a lot of games he had to watch. Charlie Morton gets one. Sure. Knock yourself out Ray's voter. John Moncada he gets one 10th place or JD Martinez gets one 10th place or Max Kepler with a nine spot. Jim. Yeah Houston voter. Christie Reckon. Jose Abreu with a seventh and a 10th and Eddie Rosario with two eights. So there's that. I don't see anything egregious here. No nothing too crazy. And you are right. I mean once you get once you get to the eight to ten range you can throw shit at a wall a little bit. Yeah I don't know that's if we wanted to throw our hands up on the side young Garrett Cole finishes higher in the MVP voting. I would have voted for Cole. I would have voted for DeGrom. I would have voted for actually dude I've never looked at the trout and and Bregman breakdown. I'm gonna look at it. OK. OK. Let's see. It is interesting because you have trout playing twenty two less games than Bregman which is similar to Yelich and Bellinger was what twenty six to twenty two. You have. Yeah some like that. You have Bregman with 90 more played appearances. You have Bregman with 84 more bats. Bregman has 12 more runs scored. He has a ton more hits. He has 10 more doubles. He has four. Did Bregman lead. Did Bregman lead the league at anything. Yeah I'll check. He has four Bregman has four less home runs than trout. He's got more RBI so he's going to have the counting stats right because he played longer but that's Bellinger had the counting stats because he played more games but Bellinger one Bregman lost. Trout had more stolen bases. All the count led the league in on base slugging and OPS. But Bregman had him in batting average had him. I didn't have him on base percentage. Slugging didn't have an OPS. That's interesting. I think we also have a factor here. The human element of the vote is that like everyone in baseball loves trout and wants trout to be the best ever. You know what I'm saying. Yeah. People want to say I got to watch that guy play. Look at his MVPs. Look at his silver sluggers. Look at his stats. And this just helps pad to the allure that is we're watching one of the best baseball players ever right now. I think there's a tiny little mismatch of that. Yeah. I don't know. I think we're we're almost going too deep into this. I think the two right guys won the MVP award. Bill. I mean Bregman was there with a lot of them. Yeah. I think it's it's the same thing. But I I think like you're saying they are similar when you start mirroring the games and some of the counting stats but I think Mike Trout's a hundred thirty four games are more impressive than Bregman's one fifty five or whatever he landed at. I don't have his page in front. But then I would say I would go. I would go. And then I would I would say I would say Bellinger's one fifty five are more impressive than Yellich's one thirty. If I'm a Houston fan I think you can have a gripe. I think you can be a bit upset about this one. Four worthy guys. Yeah. They those guys got all the first and second place votes minus one asshole. Trout though. Can we just can I just go over this with everyone. Sure. Trout came up in 2011 and he played 40 games. Not a full season doesn't count. Didn't even terrible. Didn't even pass his rookie limit. So who cares. Should I. 2012 Trout's rookie year. I won't even say all star because he's played. He's been an all star every season since his rookie year. He won rookie of the year. OK. He came second in MVP voting. He in 2012 in 2013 he came second in MVP voting again. In 2014 he was the AL MVP in 2015 he came second in MVP voting again in 2016 he was the AL MVP in 2017 he got injured. He didn't play a lot and he was the fourth place finisher in MVP voting. Hundred fourteen games hundred fourteen games in 2018 he came second in MVP voting and in 2019 he came first in MVP voting. So in eight full seasons he now has three first place finishes in MVP voting and one two three four second place finishes in MVP voting and one fourth place finish when he was injured. He's won a Silver Slogger every single year since his first first full season in 2012. Besides the injured year in 2017 when he only played a hundred fourteen games. His career is incredible. Yeah. No no comment. Yeah he's he's special. And this is it. Go go look at the baseball reference of your baseball person. It's fun to look at all the bold italics for categories he led the league in are pretty insane OPS for the last five years. Jim the the cool part for me because he's he's been special since you mentioned his rookie year like we knew this dude was different where he led the league in steals with 49 by the way. In 2014 he led the league in strikeouts which again not a big thing especially when you're doing everything else he does he led the league in total bases that year and won the MVP. But he's cut down on those a lot and it's that's when it things get really cool when you see a special player that's like yeah I won the MVP I had a really cool year I got a all right time to get into those strikeouts got to get rid of those and it's like oh you're different. Yeah it's crazy crazy. All right we have some free agent signings and happenings we have to talk about as well. Take a quick break and then we'll come back with those.