As you heard, Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox won the 2008 AL MVP vote comfortably.
Fortunately, he won the vote comfortably enough that he didn’t need the vote of Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News who left Dustin Pedroia’s name off the ballot altogether.
Here was his ballot:
Kevin Youkilis
Francisco Rodriguez
Justin Morneau
Josh Hamilton
Carlos Quentin
Alex Rodriguez
Cliff Lee
Joe Mauer
Grady Sizemore
Carlos Pena
Grant is pretty red-faced about the whole thing. In between answering emails and phone calls, he’s posted his explanation/apology on his blog.
Did I perhaps get too “cute” at the bottom of the ballot? Yeah, probably. Was that a mistake? Yeah, probably. Was it a mistake to leave him out of the top five; in retrospect, yeah, it was. My colleagues all thought he belonged in the top five. My opinion on this one was obviously wrong. What I’m happiest about is that if my analysis was so wrong, at least it did not cost Pedroia the MVP award. I can assure you I give the MVP vote an awful lot of time. In this case, perhaps I gave it too much time and overanalyzed, particularly at the bottom of the ballot. In retrospect, it’s hard to argue that Pedroia wasn’t one of the 10 best players in the league.
He over analyzed… putting too much weight on stats like BA in scoring position etc.
Despite all that, while some Red Sox fans are understanding that it was just a stupid mistake, others are calling for Grant’s head. I’ve seen commenters calling Grant an idiot, a moron and yes, the prerequisite requesting that his voting privileges be taken away.
Meh, it’s just the American League.
Update: Grant goes on The Big Show to explain his non-vote.
The interview can be heard here. (thanks College Baseball Blog)
Captain Obvious here but maybe it would have been better if had just not gone on the air. Just my opinion.