Albert Pujols named Player of the Year
TOWER GROVE — St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols continued gathering momentum toward the ultimate prize of baseball’s award season Friday as the Major League Baseball Players Association and its members named Pujols their Player of the Year.
Pujols edged LA Dodgers outfielder Manny Ramirez and Cleveland pitcher Cliff Lee for the award, which is based on a vote of his peers, fellow members of the players’ union. The award punctuates a week of accolades for the Cardinals’ first baseman and leading candidate for the NL MVP. Earlier, Pujols was honored with the Players Choice Award for NL Outstanding Player and Sporting News selected him as its Player of the Year. Both honors were based on votes of players.
From this morning’s MLBPA release:
Pujols dominated opposing pitching this season and finished second in the NL batting race with a .357 average while hitting 37 home runs and driving in 116 runs. His 104 walks, .462 OBP and 1.115 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) were all career-highs. He also became the only Major League player to hit at least 30 home runs and 100 RBIs in each of his first eight seasons. Pujols, 28, earlier in the week captured the National League Outstanding Player award and has now won a total of six Players Choice Awards since entering the league in 2001.
Pujols’ six Players Choice awards put him third all-time behind Alex Rodriguez’s eight and Barry Bonds’ seven.
An interview with Pujols about today’s award is available at Yahoo! Sports.
The Players Choice Player of the Year award has been a more-reliable indicator of the MVP award than the other trophies Pujols has taken this week. Each of the previous two winners of the Players Choice Player of the Year award have also won their league’s MVP — Rodriguez in the American League last season and Ryan Howard in the National League back in 2006. Four times since 2001 the winner of the Player of the Year award has also won his league’s MVP, including Bonds twice.
The winner of the National League MVP, an award based on the vote of 32 members of the BBWAA, will be announced Nov. 17. It is being handicapped as a two-bat race, between Pujols and Howard.
Voting was conducted before the start of the playoffs.
Pujols was also a finalist for this year’s Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award, what would have been the second time in his career that he won the award for service off the field as well as performance on it. That award, according to the release from MLBPA, went to Texas shortstop Michael Young.
Pujols will receive $50,000 for the Player of the Year award and $20,000 from the NL Outstanding Player award to be given to a charity of his choice.
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Congratulations, Albert! Let’s just hope that the baseball writers get it right this year, and vote you as MVP. This award probably means more than the MVP, though, because it’s voted on by his peers.
Congratulations, AP!
If I was a player the awards based on the players votes would mean more to me than the awards voted on by BBWAA.
I can’t give the MVP award to Ryan Howard based just on his HR and RBI total. A total of 199 K’s, a .248 BA., and a .339 OBP…that does’nt even begin to compare with AP’s numbers.
When considering AP’s defense compared to Howard’s D, Pujols’s case grows even stronger. Howard has made 19 errors this season, Pujols has only 6. 19 errors is a lot of errors…
There is nobody in the league that means more to his team than AP. The way he changes the entire way a manager think during the course of a game.
The only real challenger that I see this season is Manny Ramirez. The Dodgers are not in the playoffs without Manny. But that being said the argument against Manny is that he spent only a couple of months in the NL. It is an interesting argument for and against Manny. Your thoughts, DG…
Congratulations to Albert-His ability to played through so much pain and medical concerns at a MVP caliber is admirable,to say the least.From day 1 Albert had shown the dedication and sportmanship of being one of the greatest Cardinals to ever wear the uniform.
The rules of thumb I use are bonuses and history. Players have bonuses built into their contracts for the Cy Young (voted on by the writers) and the MVP (voted on by the writers). Pujols receives $200,000 for winning the NL MVP. And, then there’s history. If you want to look at a Pujols or a Bonds against a Stargell or a Musial … you can’t do it with Player of the Year awards. You can with the MVP.
I’m glad to see Albert get the awards. He is such a hard working player. I didn’t see anything on the national sports websites about the awards he’s won this week. I guess they just don’t rate?
If Ryan Howard is supposed to be the MVP for the Phillies, then how did they make it to the world series considering the fact that for the NLDS and NLCS combined (9 Games), he is: 8 for 31, with two doubles, 8 walks, 7 strike-outs, 5 runs, and 3 RBI’s? Not exactly Most Valuable Player numbers.
Wow!
Howard has really struggled this postseason:
HRs: 0
RBIs:1
AVG: .182
So clearly he has struggled, but an argument against that would be are the Phillies in the playoffs without Howard’s clutch preformance down the stretch in the month of Sept? He was brilliant in the month of Sept., he just had clutch hit after clutch hit.
Oops sorry…
Only 1 RBI in the playoffs for Howard, and 3 RBIs
Don’t know what stats I was looking at…
His .182 BA was in the NLDS, he has hit .300 in the NLCS, and is currently hitting .220 in the WS…
But, my question remains: Are the Phillies in the playoffs without Howard?
EMC2013- how can Howard be league MVP when he is not even MVP of the Phillies? Also, lets kibosh this whole Sept. thing- hitting in Sept. is no more valuable than hitting in April- If Howard had hit better than the .190 or whatever he hit in April and May, maybe the Phillies coast into the playoffs. Also, Howard feasts on lousy pitching- good pitchers (based on ERA) get him out consistently, as shown in the playoffs - Albert hits all pitchers. Ryan Howard is Dave Kingman.
Pujols is clearly the MVP. However, if he wins, I wonder if he’ll accept the award, considering in 2006 he remarked that Ryan Howard should not have been selected because his team failed to make the post-season.
he`s the man. oooooh yeah, baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He’ll accept the award because he has been ripped off 3 other times.
Congratulations El Hombre. Honor begets honor and you embody that! It is a pleasure to watch class in a Cardinal uniform! There is a part in all of us that desires to be honorable. Your example inspires us all. Thanks for the memories of yesterday and those that are yet to come.
Bill H,
One (hostile) reporter quoted Pujols as saying that, and Pujols denied it immediately. I don’t think you can honestly say that Pujols said that given the situation, and the fact that it does not sound like something Pujols would say.
MVP means just that: Most Valuable Player, not just Most Valuable Home Run hitter. The MVP should excel in all phases of offense (including low number of strike-outs), PLUS should wear an exceptional fielding glove. He should play the entire inning, not just the a-bat half of the inning. That said, there is only one candidate–Albert Pujols.
A better question emc2013, is do the Phillies make the playoffs WITH Howard but WITHOUT Brad Lidge? If you swapped Lidge (41 of 41 in SVO) with Isringhausen, do you have any doubt the Cardinals make the playoffs and the Phillies probably don’t?
And while Howard had a good Sep with 32 RBI, Pujols had 27 that month
Pujols had ZERO months with an OPS under .975, Howard had 2 months over .975, in fact Howard had THREE months with an OPS under .800 including a Cesar Izturis’ like OPS of .640 in April
Pujols had 1 month with an average under .311 (.302), Howard had 1 month over .311 and 4 months UNDER .240