Didn't Do It Justice

I should be embarrassed about my last post. I should hang my head in shame.

Before I continue to lambaste myself I have a little side issue to address. Don't worry, it's completely not sports related. Last week I received "Confessor" in the mail. It is the eleventh and final volume of Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series. This is my favorite fantasy series. I remember opening the first volume "Wizard's First Rule" on the Metro-North train to my aunt and uncle's house in Connecticut around nine years ago. I have been waiting for a long time for the series to end, and I can't wait to see what happens at the end. Just to put it in a frame of reference you can all understand, I'm going to continue the example using Harry Potter. A new volume in the series came out every three years, and in between the books would get discussed by fans endlessly. It would get discussed so much that the story would become the stuff of legend. And each time a new volume came out, it was as though the story was actually happening as you were reading it. Imagine you didn't know any of the stories in the bible, but you knew that the bible was the foundation of your belief system, or even that it was the basis for the beliefs of thousands of people. Now you're reading the bible for the first time, and you're internalizing the fact that what you're reading IS the bible. This is it. What you're reading is the only bible that there is, and the stories are the ones that everyone knows. Now let's go back to Harry Potter. As you read the last book you were thinking "wow, this is the story of Harry Potter. There is no other story about Harry Potter; there will never be any other story about Harry Potter." You almost start to think "who is J.K. Rowling that she can add on to the story that's already taken place?" You feel me? I'm definitely not explaining it well, but it's hard to articulate what I'm trying to convey. Anyway, the point is that this is the last part of the Richard and Kahlan story, and it can't ever be changed. I hope Terry Goodkind done good.

Anyway, I'm continuing to be beside myself with how badly I botched the last post. Thank the Lord for firejoemorgan.com. They made me realize how much more I should have written, and really how poor an MVP selection Jimmy Rollins is. I mentioned Hanley Ramirez a few times, but it didn't even occur to me that Jimmy Rollins wasn't even the best shortstop in his division this season. And you know what? I'm not even going to use fancy sabermetric stats, because the MVP voters don't look at those anyway; I'm gonna look at the old-fashioned stats. Since Rollins got 77 more at bats, I'm going to list Ramirez's actual stats and his projected stats with those extra 77 at bats (in parentheses):

Batting Average: Rollins: .296, Ramirez: .332
Runs Scored: Rollins: 139, Ramirez: 125 (140)
Hits: Rollins: 212, Ramirez: 212 (238)
RBI: Rollins: 94, Ramirez: 81 (91)
Doubles: Rollins: 38, Ramirez: 48 (54)
Triples: Rollins: 20, Ramirez: 6 (7)
Home Runs: Rollins: 30, Ramirez: 29 (32)
Total Bases: Rollins: 380, Ramirez: 359 (402)
Extra Base Hits: Rollins: 88, Ramirez: 83 (93)
Strikeouts: Rollins: 85, Ramirez: 95 (106)
Walks: Rollins: 49, Ramirez: 52 (58)
Stolen Bases: Rollins: 41, Ramirez: 51 (57)
Outs: Rollins: 521 (Led all of baseball, and the most outs of any MVP ever), Ramirez: 451 (505)
OBP: Rollins: .344, Ramirez: .386
SLG: Rollins: .531, Ramirez: .562
OPS: Rollins: .875, Ramirez: .948

I realize that projecting the stats isn't exactly fair, but even if I didn't do that, Ramirez still leads Rollins in BA, doubles, BBs, SBs, Outs, OBP, SLG, and OPS. They are tied in hits, and virtually tied in home runs. How can someone who is inferior to another player AT THE SAME POSITION, in just about every single important (and unimportant) statistical category beat the other in MVP voting 353 to 49? It just doesn't make any sense.