The Hawk elected

[miraja2]

Originally Posted by SniperSB23

Tough to get too upset about a guy winning MVP that hit 49 HRs, drove in 137 RBIs, and won a Gold Glove. There is a solid argument for Gwynn that year although the 137 to 54 RBI margin is tough to overcome but no one ever confused Jack Clark with a gold glover. While he put up good numbers offensively he was never helping his team in the field.

It just irritates me that voters pay more attention to a stat like RBI than to a stat like OPS (or at least the stats that go into OPS before the number was tracked). To me, OPS gives a much clearer indication of the kind of year a guy had offensively than a team-dependent stat like runs scored or RBI. Dawson's OPS in '87 wasn't bad....but it was hardly MVP worthy in my estimation.

[SniperSB23]

Originally Posted by miraja2

It just irritates me that voters pay more attention to a stat like RBI than to a stat like OPS (or at least the stats that go into OPS before the number was tracked). To me, OPS gives a much clearer indication of the kind of year a guy had offensively than a team-dependent stat like runs scored or RBI. Dawson's OPS in '87 wasn't bad....but it was hardly MVP worthy in my estimation.

That is changing, OPS is definitely very strongly considered when people are looking at MVP's now.

[miraja2]

Originally Posted by SniperSB23

That is changing, OPS is definitely very strongly considered when people are looking at MVP's now.

As it should be.

To illustrate again how horrible Dawson's .328 OBP is for an MVP:
Every other NL MVP in the last 50 years had a OBP at least 14 points higher than .328, and most were significantly higher. Furthermore, the guys that finished in the ten spots behind Dawson in the MVP voting that year also all had OBP's at least 14 points higher than Dawson's....and again....most were much higher.
Now obviously OPB isn't the only thing that matters, but to me the MVP of the league should be able to get on base a lot when he comes up. Dawson did not.