Ladies and gentleman, I give you your MVP runnerup: Adrian Beltre

contrast that attitude with sheffield or pujols, who have won i don't know how many games for their teams this year playing through pain. oh, and then there was that whole missing 5 games with a cold thing.

(ie still plenty of reason not to like the guy folks)

i love that man.

Not to mention he is at least 10 years older than Pujols (who knows for sure?) and is quite a different player than Sheffield is.

are you kidding me??

"is quite a different player than Sheffield is."

no, he's not at all. unless you mean what you probably mean, which doesn't actually have anything to do with what i'm talking about. please, don't even try to argue that bonds is half as tough as gary is. barry can (and does) have all the talent in the world, but at the end of the day he's still a pussy.

giants lose 7-6. bonds makes an out in his PH AB.

Hi John,

I've been watching Bonds for almost his entire career. While his hamstring isn't going to tear in half, i would imagine that it has never healed completely based on first hand observation. For a guy who has had only 2 substantial stays on the DL in a 19 year career and has played in less than 140 games only 1 time since 1987, your definition of "pussy" shows either a very poor or creative understanding of it.

And while your attempt to credit Bonds with the loss with his PH AB (the Giants had the lead at the time) is charming, if you'd actually watched the game you'd have seen Dustin Hermanson gave up 3 hits and a walk (2 Runs) in the bottom of the 9th while failing to retire a batter.

Well, yeah, there's plenty on-record of The Pain of The Bonds (mostly because, since I'm not in the SF area, the only non-stat noise I hear about Bonds is about his aches & pains & BB's attitude re: the aches & pains & the media's slanting of BB's attitude re: the aches & pains), but if there's a player nowadays that can deservedly get away w/ some diva histrionics, it is he, and I don't recall any outright grandstanding re: his aches & pains (which, from what I've heard, are pretty severe - I heard it takes 10 man hours for his hammies to get prepped before gametime?)

he didn't cost them the game by making a lousy out, he cost them the game by NOT PLAYING.

for a roided-up 40 year old man with a shot hammy, he still runs the bases and plays the field pretty well. so i thought, in a deadlocked wildcard race with only a month remaining in the season, where a single loss could certainly cost the giants a playoff berth, and with two days off in the coming week, he might take a risk, make an exception, and play this game. sacrifice his body a little bit, for the good of the team, like some of those other mvp candidates are. y'know, that corny old-school unselfish "white" bullshit.

(i'm just kidding of course, i never thought that. i know the guy too well)

regards

john

beltre, 3B
g - 125
eqa - .340

pujols, 1B
g - 124
eqa - .341

seems to me like beltre should have the higher VORP.

Well, it would figure to be. Even if most MVP winners are from one of the 8 playoff teams, odds of the player's team going on to get the trophy is roughly 1 in 8, given that most postseason series are a coin flip (or "fucking luck" as Mr Beane put it).

>seems to me like beltre should have the higher VORP

Pujols has nearly 40 more plate appearances.

no one will agree with me on this and he won't win, but it's gotta be sheffield in the AL.

Through Sunday, Shefffield is third in the AL in Adjusted Runs Above Position, trailing only Guillen and Mora (neither of whom will get support) and just ahead of Vlad.

Another way to look at it is that teams who rely on one player for most their offense rarely win it all.

edmonds .311/.426/.672, neutral park
beltre .338/.386/.652, pitcher's park

gotta figure defense is a wash/edge to edmonds. but jimmy doesn't have great clutch/risp numbers.

the trouble of course is that rolen and pujols still loom VERY large...but i'm moving back to undecided.

Edmonds would likely be my #2 at the moment.

VORP, Sept 1

Bonds 118.9
Pujols 82.2
Edmonds 78.5

"* In terms of EqA, the gap between Bonds and Beltre is bigger than the gap between Beltre and Cody Ransom. Hell, the gap between Bonds and Beltre about as big as the gap between Beltre and Neifarious."

If the Yanks win the division despite all those pitching injuries, I think Sheff will win (although Rivera probably deserved equal credit. In a way, they're the Bonds-Schmidt combo of the AL, or at least, that is how they will be perceived).

Last year Manny was also better when he played (he was injured for several weeks last season). But he's got this Albert Belle-esque rep as a "difficult" personality and a selfish player, which the voters hate. Whereas Ortiz has the opposite rep. I think Manny would need vastly superior numbers than any of his competitors to make up that difference in the voters' eyes, and that's just not true this season.

Albert Pujols 2
Adrian Beltre 3
Jim Edmonds 4
Todd Helton 5
Lance Berkman 6
Bobby Abreu 7
Scott Rolen 8
Mark Loretta 9
J.D. Drew 10

(therefore: NOT a dopey question dave r!)

((helton?))

[and i don't care what you say, rolen should totally have been #4 dude, you've been rash]

Beltre ($11.4M)
.244/.279/.361

Boone ($9M)
.234/.299/.378

Sexson ($6M)
.244/.353/.507

Beltre

Sexson

In best promotion ever, #Rangers giving away miniature on-deck circles to honor Adrian Beltre: https://t.co/9pzL8ZfRI9

— Evan Grant (@Evan_P_Grant) August 11, 2017

hahaha

love it

out at least four weeks ;_;

Awful! He's having a partial season that ranks with all his other second-greatest seasons.

Adrian Beltre got to meet Beltre the Giraffe at the @FortWorthZoo today. https://t.co/Isr4ahfM88 pic.twitter.com/Bk3lwq3VaQ

— Cut4 (@Cut4) March 30, 2018

Adrian Beltre Becomes the Latin American Hit King https://t.co/I4ZNwtnCUe

— FanGraphs Baseball (@fangraphs) April 5, 2018

That is just amazing. This guy has blossomed into an All-Timer.

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/adrian-beltre-is-now-the-international-hit-king/

I never get tired of these two guys:

http://www.mlb.com/cut4/felix-hernandez-laughed-at-adrian-beltre-after-striking-him-out/c-289319882

(Extra credit to Beltre--as the announcers point out, he knows when not to joke around.)

I hope Ade comes back for a final season. He’s been injured and his statline is a touch below recent years but still, he has been playing out of his mind the past couple weeks and his bWAR is a very nice 2.3 (in approx 2/3 of a season.)

Hope so too. Otherwise (and it makes no actual difference in his stature), the two partial seasons will end up costing him 500 HR and 100 WAR.

In honor of Adrián Beltré retiring here’s a thread of all of his best, goofiest and most wonderful moments.

The dude was such a vehicle of baseball joy and we’ll all miss his antics.

— Cespedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) November 20, 2018

not complete without:
http://i.imgur.com/vv7x8lf.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DtR9eU2U8AA8ck-.jpg:small

@GrantBrisbee Hello Grant, long time reader here. I just wanted to share this very important video with you where Adrian Beltre was shopping at JC Penny with his family and randomly appeared in a commercial where the person had no idea who he was. https://t.co/nkmxaMNHig

— Mark Sandritter (@MarkSandritter) January 24, 2019

Damn, he didn't even get a chryon