Posted by tecwrg on 11/16/2013 12:08:00 PM (view original):
Since BL won't I will (emphasis mine):
"I also hear the Trout proponents make the point that the Cabrera supporters are ignoring Cabrera's mediocre September (when his batting average was just .278, with only two extra-base hits all month).
Well, I, for one, am not ignoring it. It ought to be a factor, for any voter. But I also think Cabrera's September vividly defines the difference between his team and Trout's team.
If Miguel Cabrera played for Mike Trout's team -- a team that finished 18 games out of first place and spent exactly one day above .500 all season -- hey, guess what?
He never would have had that mediocre September -- because he wouldn't have been playing.
He was a guy who spent that whole month (and October) battling a groin/abdomen injury that was so severe, he required surgery right after the season. And here's something I've noticed about players on losing teams who are that seriously injured:
Their teams shut them down.
There's no reason for them to battle through the pain and the limitations at the end of a lost season. So they pack it in.
But as Cabrera told us in October, once the Tigers had finally been eliminated, he felt he had to play because his team was trying to win. And he understood what his presence meant to a team that needed to keep pushing, all the way to the finish line.
Because he felt that way, he staggered through the last five weeks of the season -- and still finished with a stat line so incredible (.348/.442/.636/1.078/44 HR) that only two other right-handed hitters in the history of baseball (Jimmie Foxx and Hack Wilson) have ever matched or beaten it.
So please. Can the folks on the Trout side stop writing and/or screaming that those 23 MVP voters who cast their first-place votes for Miguel Cabrera were "wrong," or just a bunch of dopes who made a "bad" choice?"
You didn't need to quote the entire thing. You could have just summed it up like this: