Mr. Morneau may have been more valuable to the Twins than Jeter was to the Yankees, for the simple fact that Jeter has the luxury of being backed up by 8 other stellar batters.

Stellar guys like Aaron Guiel, Terrence Long, Melky Cabrera, Nick Greene and Bubba Crosby all saw significant time behind him.

Morneau was at best the third most valuable guy on his team. He is a joke.

Also you better check your stats, I find it hard to believe Jeter had .82 XBH and .3/3 in SB

I'm standing by what I said. Jeter is clearly (to me) the better player, but as far as value to his repsective team goes, the twins would have been FAR worse off w/o Justin, whereas if the yanks had to play without Jeter, it would be rough but a lineup of A-Rod, Matsui, Melky, Abreu, Giambi, Posada, et all would have picked up the slack.

I think you might have forgot one important stat...RBI's: Morneau - 130, Jeter - 97.

mmmm..Jessica Biel. Lucky Bastard.

Mr Faded Glory, you need to learn to read..its Morneau who has 82xbh and 3/3 for SB.

Missy, RBI is not an important stat. It depends way too much on the players around you.

And, because it's literally my job to be nit-picky, it's RBI (Runs Batted In), not RBI's (Run Batted In's??).

Sorry. I'm a dick.

How is Morneau's 34 HRs to Jeter's 13 "edging" him in power stats? And if Jeter is so great at holding a team together, how come Giambi and Torre dump on A-Rod in public? Great team unity. Morneau should have it hands down. He brought his team from the gutter into the division lead in the toughest division in the MLB this year. Do us a favor and stop commenting on sports.

anon, where in this article did i mention anything about jeter "holding the team together" or that being a reason to award him an mvp??

if you don't like me "commenting on sports", there is a sweet little "x" button right in the corner of your browser that will make the blog disappear from your line of vision....

130 RBI is unbelievable for a guy who started the year batting 7th behind GIDP threats like Torii Hunter and RonDL "Mendoza" White. 120 runs is par for the course for a guy with decent OBP and batting ahead of the eight other Yankees.

Morneau was easily the best offensive player on the Twins. Mauer was good, but, like Jeter, his only claim to the award was a batting average over .340. Which is really not that far from .321 anyway. Morneau wins hands down; if Jeter is on any other team, including the Mets and the Red Sox, he's not even getting votes.

ryan,
I actually think that jeter's numbers would be more impressive if he WAS on another team, because they would have had a bigger impact. think of those #s on, say the padres. maybe they could have beaten the cards more than once :) since jeter is part of a very inpressive collective yankees lineup, i think his personal accomplishments have less weight.

that is why i actually agree that morneau was more valuable to the twins than jeter was to the yankees and thus deserving of the award.

Jeter was the best player on the best team and should be MVP. You can argue that Mauer, Santana and even Liriano were more valuable to the Twins that Morneau. Sadly, most voters just look at the RBI total and figure that is all that counts.

I guess if a Twin was going to win it I would have preferred Mauer.

Chicago writer is simply anti-NYY and it wouldn't have mattered what Jeter did, he wasn't going to be higher than 6th.

pinstripepostings.blogspot.com

There is simply too much anti-Yankee bias (and especially anti-Jeter bias) around for Jeter to have won. You don't have to be a genius to see that. 9 out of 10 comments I read that are against Jeter, man, you can almost see the people shaking with a weird kind of hatred. It's really amazing. I've never seen anything like it in my life.

I guess it's some kind of envy or jealousy for a lot of them, hatred of the Yankees for a lot, most of them a combination.

Anyway, I think it's obvious that Jeter was the MVP this year. Not by a gigantic margin, but clear enough. Minnesota had a great team, with two Cy Young pitchers, a batting champ, a few other excellent hitters, and your typical power hitting first baseman coming up with men on base. Sportswriters always are enamored with power hitting first basemen and outfielders who drive in a lot of runs.

Morneau was hot for maybe 2/3 or the season, the same time that Detroit went into a free fall. Jeter was consistent all year, was the ONLY Yankee that played consistently well, and the only one that played well during parts of the year when players around him kept going out with injuries. They pulled away only because of the sweep in Boston (which Jeter was integral to) and Boston never recovered.

Well, anyway, overemotional Yankee-haters are never going to think straight. But Jeter deserved the award, and didn't win because of bias against him and the Yankees.

*beep beep* here come some other stats:

Jeter WARP3: 12.1
Morneau WARP3: 8.6

Jeter VORP: 80.5 (highest in AL)
Morneau VORP: 52.0 (Mauer had a VORP of 66.9)

Jeter EqA: .309
Morneau EqA: .300

Jeter FRAR: 30
Morneau FRAR: 16

If a single baseball writer looked at those stats I would be shocked.

Stop complaining. Maybe Jeter deserved it more than Morneau, but Carlos Guillen deserved it more than both of them.

Carolos Guillen - isn't he in Triple A?

If Carlos Guillen deserved it more than Jeter, than I deserved it more than Jeter, because while Guillen may have produced less than Jeter, I produced less than Guillen. Makes sense. My VORP was -3.

Guess a gold glove, silver slugger, and a Hank Aaron award weren't enough. Morneau, no gold or silver, but gets the MVP.

The stats ChrisV82 provided are all you need. Jeter was more valuable than mauer.

morneau**