Invaluable

Most Valuable Player. Those three words have stymied journalists and baseball fans alike for years, as it seems as if every season there is the same annual debate over what exactly they are supposed to mean. March Madness chose to take the easy route with its "Most Oustanding Player" award, which you hand to the best player and move on, but baseball (along with many other sports) does it the hard way, insisting that the recipient must not simply be outstanding, but "valuable."

It's an especially intriguing question this year, because two of the athletes in consideration for the National League award are recent arrivals to their league: Manuel "Manny" Aristedes Ramirez Onelcida and Carsten Charles "C.C." Sabathia. Both players are being mentioned as candidates for an award that they could not possibly have won at the season's halfway point, when they worked for American League clubs (and were not in MVP form).

Having both been reborn when traded to the Senior Circuit, the question concerning both players becomes: how do you interpret "value?" Many would argue that the award is best interpreted in the sense of value to one's team--how much that particular club's season was improved by the presence of that player. By this (very common) logic, however, both players would seem to be entirely undeserving of the award. As terrifically as Manny and C.C. have played for their new teams, it seems unrealistic to think that the Brewers, for example, have benefited more from half a season of C.C. than they did from a full season of Ben Sheets. Few players in the history of the game, if any, have actually been twice as good as their next greatest contemporary, and that would be the message if Sabathia or Ramirez were deemed to be the most valuable to their teams.

There is, of course, another way of looking at the term "value"--the run-scoring (or run-preventing, in Sabathia's case) value of the player's production over the course of the year. It generally isn't an MVP contender's fault if he gets traded (although an exception applies to Mr. Ramirez), the argument goes, so why should they be deprived of an award for their hard work (again--exception for Mr. Ramirez) if their team decided to ship them off and rebuild? When evaluated not by their value to their new team, but by their value as score-affecters over the course of the entire season, Manny and C.C. are quite legitimate NL MVP candidates.

Neither way of interpreting the MVP award is correct, although the second line of reasoning does have some interesting implications. Part of the MVP tradition is that it generally can only go to a player on a contending team. This is entirely consistent with the "team value" line of reasoning, since if a player's club doesn't make it to the postseason, they may not have provided as much value as the stars of playoff teams. However, if the half-and-half seasons of Manny and C.C. are going to be considered for the award, it means we are using a "player value" framework, in which case any player on any team is eligible. Manny or C.C. may end up winning it, but if they are even going to be considered, it means there are many other players to look at as well.