Joe Mauer for MVP

A few weeks ago, some of you will no doubt be aware that I did a guest post on River Ave Blues arguing that Derek Jeter should walk away with the MVP.

No disrespect to Jeter, who is still having an amazing season and an even more amazing road trip, but I need to change my vote.

I have seen the light, and the light is Joe Mauer.

How have I seen the light?

Mauer's average, .383, is higher than Mark Teixeira's on-base-percentage. That means that Joe Mauer is getting a greater percentage of hits than Mark Teixeira--one of the league leaders in OBP--is getting on base.

Mauer has 139 hits and 25 home runs to go along with it--and let's not forget, he missed the entire first month of the season.

As one might now expect, his walks and strike outs are almost exactly identical (46 and 47), and this is already mid-late August.


The only, and I mean only, knock on Mauer here is that the team he's playing for is, well, not very good, and the award is most valuable and not most outstanding player.

Still, it can't be much of a complaint. Alex Rodriguez, after all, won on the last place Texas Rangers, right?

Take heart, supporters of Jeter and Teixeira, however: those two could very well pick up some other hardware that might skip Mauer by (this season, at least)--and that hardware is plenty valuable on its own.