Pujols wins Player of the Year award from MLBPA
ST. LOUIS — Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols continued his annual award spree by winning the Players Choice Player of the Year award, which is given each year after a vote of the members of the players’ union.
The award was announced this morning on ESPN Radio, which has been given exclusive rights by the Major League Baseball Players Association to reveal the awards. Pujols joined the show for a second consecutive day and talked mostly about the World Series.
On Thursday, he spoke more about the St. Louis Cardinals when receiving the NL Outstanding Player award. He also spoke with a local show on ESPN Radio, and that is captured in Bryan Burwell’s column this morning. Post-Dispatch columnist Burwell is a co-host of the radio show Pujols called.
Other candidates for the Player of the Year award were Minnesota Twins Joe Mauer, who won a batting title and is a favorite for the AL MVP, and Hanley Ramirez, who won the NL batting title. Mauer, the Twins affable and dynamic catcher, has won three batting titles in his career and had a claim to the award and figured to challenge Pujols. Mauer arguably had the better season with a .365 average, 28 home runs and 96 RBIs while also playing Gold Glove defense at the game’s most demanding position.
This is the second consecutive season that Pujols has swept the Players Choice awards, winning both the NL Outstanding Player and the Player of the Year awards. Each award comes with a cash prize that the player then designates for a charity. Pujols told Mike and Mike in the Morning that he has not selected a charity for either of his prizes.
The NL MVP will be announced Nov. 24.
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(6 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
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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. 
Albert Pujols —pure and simple –the CLASS of the CLASS The epitomy of a Cardinal. Second only to Stan the Man — and maybe not second long.
Congrats to Albert. We should really approximate this time in Cardinals history as years from it will be looked back upon as great a time.
Way to go Albert…those of you who live in St. Louis have no idea how lucky you are to have this man on your team! One of the few things that makes living in Oklahoma bearable is that all Cardinal games are on cable here…wish I was in STL and able to go to more games to see Albert live..he is amazing!
How did Mauer have a better year than Pujols?
BA: Pujols .327 Mauer .365 Advantage: Mauer (wide margin)
HR: Pujols 47 Mauer 28 Advantage: Pujols (wide margin)
RBI: Pujols 135 Mauer 96 Advantage: Pujols (wide margin)
R: Pujols 124 Mauer 94 Advantage: Pujols (wide margin)
OBP: Pujols .443 Mauer .444 Advantage: Mauer (arguably a push)
SLG: Pujols .658 Mauer .587 Advantage: Pujols (wide margin)
OPS: Pujols 1.101 Mauer 1.031 Advantage: Pujols
2B: Pujols 45 Mauer 30 Advantage: Pujols (wide margin)
BB: Pujols 115 Mauer 76 Advantage: Pujols (wide margin)
SO: Pujols 64 Mauer 63 Advantage: Mauer (and better K/AB)
Not to take away from Mauer, but Pujols won in 7 of those 10 categories, and by very wide margins.
Pujols is in a league of his own. Everyone else is battling for dominance in a different league.
T, I think Goold was talking about Mauer having a better season than Hanley, not Albert.
Albert wants to play in Miami
The argument for Mauer is that his greater value as a defensive player outweighed Pujols’ greater value as an offensive player. Catchers are typically the weakest hitters in a starting lineup because managers believe a good catcher, especially a Gold Glove catcher, is more valuable than a good-hitting mediocre-fielding catcher if you consider the runs that they save fielding and handling pitchers as well as the runs they produce hitting. Yogi Berra won three MVPs in the 1950s even though Mickey Mantle was the best hitter in the league by a good margin because enough baseball writers bought this argument. But it’s hard to know with any certainty–and easy to overrate–how many runs a Gold Glove catcher saves. That’s part of the Pujols/Mantle argument.
Michelle says: “One of the few things that makes living in Oklahoma bearable is that all Cardinal games are on cable here.”
(Speaking from my own experience, seeing Cards games on TV in Okieland was nice, but overall did not make life there bearable. Remember, it’s such a dismal place that no one objected when they gave it to the leftover Indians.)
How many awards are there
HE IS A MAN OF HONOR AND I WOULD EXPECT NOTHING LESS THAN HAVING HIM AS THIS YEARS NL OUTSTANDING PLAY AND PLAYER OF THE YEAR. I HOPE HE MAKES HIS HOME HERE FOR THE REST OF HIS CAREER AND AM LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING A NO 5 BANNER IN THE STADIUMS OUTFIELD SOMEDAY! CONGRATULATIONS MR PUJOLS