Jimmy Rollins is the Latest Bad MVP Pick by the BBWAA

The BBWAA awarded the National League MVP to Jimmy Rollins. This is not the worst pick ever, but it's another in a long line of wrong picks. One could make a case for Rollins deserving the award. However, the problem is that you could make a case for a half of dozen other players and end up with a more convincing argument. Here are the pros and cons for Rollins:

Pros
Key player on a team that made the playoffs
Led the league in runs scored
Finished second in total bases
Played all 162 games
Posted rare 20-20-20-20
A good fielder at key defensive position
Great basestealer
Made boast at beginning of season about making playoffs and backed it up

Cons
Not counting fielder's choices, he made a whopping 510 outs
He finished 47th among NL qualifiers in on-base percentage
Finished 15th among NL qualifiers in slugging percentage
Teammates Ryan Howard and Chase Utley each had better years offensively

While there are more pros than cons listed, those cons are pretty serious ones for an MVP winner. It's hard to overestimate the importance of the first one. Some claim that there is no clock in baseball, but the sport's clock is measured in outs. And if a player is sucking up outs like Rollins, that's a major problem.

The on-base percentage is just shocking. After all, Rollins is a leadoff hitter, whose main responsibility is to get on base so that the sluggers like Ryan Howard can drive him in. For contrast, Howard in his 2006 MVP season finished fifth in the league in on-base percentage. You have to go back 20 years to find an NL MVP winner with an on-base percentage as poor as Rollins. And Andre Dawson's MVP win is widely considered one of the worst selections of all time.

The last NL MVP Award winner not to finish in the top 10 in slugging percentage was Barry Larkin in 1995. A shortstop like Rollins, Larkin still won the Silver Slugger Award for best hitting shortstop and he also won the Gold Glove Award.

It's really inexcusable for an MVP winner not to be the best player on his team. And there's no way that Rollins was better than either Howard or Utley in anything except staying in the lineup.

Durability is Rollins' biggest strength. And that is definitely an important factor. But nearly all of Rollins' advantages can be traced to playing every day. He led the league in runs scored, but despite getting on base in front of Utley, Howard and Aaron Rowand, he scored runs at the same rate as Hanley Ramirez and Chipper Jones and just barely better than Matt Holliday or David Wright.

Let's use the same pros/cons approach for first Holliday and then Wright.

Matt Holliday Pros
Key player on a team that made the playoffs
Led league in average, total bases and RBIs
Finished third in runs and slugging
Above-average fielder
Excellent second half
His play down the stretch was key factor in club's 14-1 record in last 15 games

Matt Holliday Cons
Offensive numbers inflated by Coors Field
Finished fifth in the league in GDPs

Holliday was the best player on a playoff team. He also had his name consistently among the league's top 10 in virtually every offensive category. Holliday was also very durable, as he played in 158 games. And while his numbers were helped by his home field, his road OPS was nearly identical to Rollins' as he beat him by one point, .860-.859 in 2007.

David Wright Pros
Key player on a team that was eliminated from the playoffs on the final day of the season
Led league in times on base
Finished in top 10 in 12 different categories, including average, on-base percentage, runs, walks and steals
Good fielder
Excellent baserunner
Played his best in the second half
Offensive numbers hurt by Shea Stadium

David Wright Cons
Hurt by team's second-half collapse
Finished 12th in slugging percentage

Earlier, I mentioned that Rollins made 510 outs. In two fewer games, Wright made 415 outs. Because Rollins batted leadoff and Wright hit mostly third, Rollins had 67 more plate appearances than Wright. Even if Wright went 0-for-67, a completely preposterous assumption, he still would have made 28 fewer outs than Rollins. The number of outs Rollins made was just staggering.

Those outs translate into real runs. It's impossible to say how Wright would have done if he could be the leadoff hitter for the Phillies playing his home games in the offensive paradise known as Citizens Bank Park. But if Wright just kept his .416 on-base percentage over 778 plate appearances, he would have been on base for the Phillies 324 times. Rollins scored 52% of the times he got on base. If Wright had done that, he would have scored 168 runs or 29 more than Rollins.

Rollins enjoys an edge over both Holliday and Wright for defensive value, as he plays the toughest position of the three and is one of the top fielders around. However, neither Holliday nor Wright is bad defensively. Wright even won a Gold Glove Award this year, although it was probably undeserved

He also enjoys a slight edge over Wright and a big edge over Holliday on the basepaths. Finally, he hit many more triples than the other two players.

But every other phase of the game, he is clearly inferior to our other two candidates. So why did he win? Were the writers swayed by his 20-20-20-20 season in doubles, triples, home runs and stolen bases? Did backing up his pre-season boast about being the team to beat make the writers swoon? Did they fall for his scrappiness? Or did he just give better quotes?

I think Holliday and Wright had better MVP cases than Jimmy Rollins in 2007. But I also think that Jake Peavy, Prince Fielder, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Albert Pujols were better picks than Rollins.

Another year, another bad pick by the BBWAA for a major award.