Pitchers as MVP

Justin Verlander won the MVP award in addition to the Cy Young this year. Good for him. He clearly deserved it. But what shocks me is that there are still people out there who don't believe that pitchers should be considered for MVP. Some say that they already have their own award in the Cy Young award. Others, like Jim Ingraham (quoted at the bottom of this article), believe that pitcher don't play in "79% of their games" likening the situation to a quarterback who only played in three games of the season being named MVP.

Can Ingraham really not see the difference in these scenarios? Does he not understand baseball at all? A pitcher may only pitch once every five days, but when he's playing, he's exerting himself consistently on every pitch of the game. The only other person who touches the ball as much as him is the catcher. The strain on the arm is immense and has done loads of harm to many pitchers. The rest is an essential part of being a consistent pitcher and for having a long career.

Another factor: he looks like a nice guy, too.

Secondly, just because position players play nearly every game, they spend much of the time not participating. And many plays don't require them to give 100% of their effort. They aren't called routine fly/ground balls for nothing. Baseball is a pretty leisurely game that's interrupted by bursts of action. That's one of the appeals of the game for me. As a result, the players have a lot of "idle" time (in quotes because they should still be paying attention). As Ingraham mentions, part of the experience is the 162-game season. Well... who really wears down more? The player playing every game but only needing to exert himself at intervals or the pitcher who pitches 100 pitches every game, many in high stress situations, and can't afford to let up on the intensity at risk of giving up runs.

Plus, just because pitchers have off days doesn't mean they are sitting on a couch eating Cheese Puffs. In my experience, pitchers are required to run more than any of the position players because their position is an endurance one (don't believe me? Try pitching in 95-100 degree heat). They also have pitching sessions to keep themselves loose and to fix kinks in the motion. And let's not forgot all the time they spend studying film of other teams and developing the strategy for their next start.

Pitchers may not play in every game doesn't mean that they should be left out of the MVP race. It's ignorant and asinine. They are as much as part of the team as anyone. As the link above shows, Verlander was tied for league lead in WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player). Therefore, even though he only played in about 21% of his teams games, he added more wins by himself than anyone else on the team. It's times like this that I wish FireJoeMorgan was still churning out new content.