Balls, Sticks and Stuff basks in the glory of the Phillies comeback. His wife sums it up best:
Nomination for quote of the day on Sunday comes from The Missus during the late innings: “I’ve never seen so many smiling Philadelphians.”
I don’t really buy the Jimmy Rollins for MVP argument. He wasn’t the best hitting shortstop in the NL East (Ramirez) nor the best hitter on his team (Utley, despite the injury). The problem is most people ahead of him didn’t play on winning teams, and Utley was in fact injured, missing a month of the season. So Rollins will accumulate quite a few votes.
Update: According to Baseball Prospectus, the Mets collapse was the second biggest in history, just behind the 1995 Angels. That’s based on fall from the highest probability of making the playoffs, based on BP’s monte carlo method. On August 20th, 1995, the Angels had a 99.988% of making the playoffs. The Mets were 99.80 at their peak on September 12th. Now if you factor in time, I think the Mets fall was worse, but not much. The Angels peaking in late August says they were a great team in a weak division with weak wild cards. The Mets were a good team with a big lead late.
I’m with you, to a certain degree, about Jimmy Rollins for MVP. He’s certainly not been the most valuable player (even on his own team) this year. That honor resides with Utley, who, if he hadn’t missed a month, would almost certainly win the award.
But, I have to say, he’s been the most exciting player on the Phils, all year. From the January proclamations, to playing every game, to the gimmicky 20-20-20-20 thing, it have always FELT like Jimmy has been at the center of every good thing the Phils have done this year.
No, he’s not the best player. Just one of the most fun, and frankly, as a Phillies fan, I’ll take it.
As a big Rollins fan—I have to agree with your MVP comment. Ramirez, though worse defensively, had better hitting statistics. Frankly, it should Wright or Holliday based on individual play. Had Utley played all season, then I think he could have won it. I don’t think Fielder should get it because his hitting, though impressive, does not make up for hislack of defensive value that these other players have. Hollidays stats do.
As important as stats are for an MVP candidate, I like a player who has “intangibles” a LOT. One could easily say Rollins, is MVP due to the fact he moved his team to be “the team to beat” by playing hard coupled with vocalizing his confidence in his teammates. There’s no stat for inspiring your team to the playoffs, but nobody will argue whether he did it or not. I’d rather have one player who can do that, than 9 everyday talented guys *cough*Mets*cough* because that one guy makes so much of a difference that it would make him most valuable to my team. Thus, most valuable player..