lolol SC anchor yelled "good job! good effort!" while they were playing the clip of bobby V getting a standing ovation for getting thrown out of the game

Evanka Osmak says that all the time.

lol canada

nice

pedroia just got an error for being short

well deserved. no one that short should dream of playing baseball.

Pedroia is really like 5'5 right?

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index...tching-genius/

Interview with Trevor Bauer pretty interesting.

If Heyward has a good September and Pirates fall out of it he should be your 2012 NL MVP.

Scherzer for cy young and heyward for MVP jfc this thread is so infected

I just see Yadi and Posey splitting a lot of votes. Definitely think there is an argument for either one over Heyward, but I think they grade so similar in the voters eyes that one or the other won't get enough to win.

wait wat

i mean, there's a non-zero amount of legitimacy for heyward as mvp but scherzer?

Greear said scherzer should get cy young consideration

lol heyward

pretty good when you look at the WAR $TAT$ but of course fangraphs is bunk since it includes a fielding metric that says alfonso soriano is the third best defender in baseball.

greear still thinks porcello's a first ballot HOF, he doesn't count

I mean we can all agree Wright and Braun have no shot whatsoever at NL MVP b/c of their teams performance, right?

So, then, we have a few legit candidates:

McCutchen
Posey
Yadi
Holliday
Heyward

Ranked by fWAR we have:

McCutchen 6.1
Heyward 6.0
Yadi 5.4
Posey 5.3
Holliday 4.8

Ranked by wRC+:

McCutchen 161
Posey 154
Holliday 148
Yadi 145
Heyward 135

Heyward is definitely going to have to get his counting stats up, but none of these guys have THAT tremendous HR/RBI totals that put them so far out in front of the pack.

Heyward currently has 24 HR and 19 SB. If he gets to 30 HR and 25 SB, I think his counting stats will be fine for the argument.

Voters aren't super savvy, but definitely smartening up a bit over the past 5+ years. I'm not sure they'll value defense and baserunning enough, but if they do give it more weight than in the past, then the Heyward discussion becomes very possible.

If the Pirates make the playoffs McCutchen will win the MVP. However, it's looking pretty likely they are going to fall off a cliff this September. If they do, I just don't think McCutchen gets the MVP. Voters value playoff appearances a ton still. FFS, Verlander won the MVP last year b/c there wasn't a better candidate on a playoff team.

I definitely think Heyward needs a sick parlay to win MVP. First he needs Pirates to fall off (not so impossible), then he HAS to get to 30 HR and at least 20 SB (somewhat likely), then he either needs the Braves to win the first WC spot by a bunch of games and/or catch and pass the Nats (seems unlikely we pass the Nats), and he needs a lot of vote splitting between Yadi/Posey and Yadi/Holliday.

Stranger things have happened. Nonetheless he almost definitely finishes top 5 in voting and more likely top 3.

FWIW, I'd prefer he not win the MVP since he's about to hit his arb years.

Heyward's defensive metrics are legit. Bill James ranks him as the top defensive RFer in baseball. His baserunning is elite too (first to third, scoring from first on a double, scoring from second on a single, and SBs).

soriano has played good defense, as hard as that is to imagine.

I'm sure Heyward is the 2nd most valuable defender in the league as a right fielder when the 1st most valuable defender is playing center field next to him

IIRC this exact argument was used to explain why Granderson had such poor defensive metrics in NY. The idea being that b/c Gardner was playing LF and could cover a bunch of ground it was making Granderson seem to have less range than he actually did.

By this logic, you'd assume Heyward is in fact a better defender than his numbers suggest due to Bourn's ability in CF.