Marc Topkin of the St. Pete Times was kind enough to post his ballot on The Heater blog. I have to say I am extremely disappointed that the team’s own beat writer only ranked Zobrist 8th on the ballot – especially that he was ranked behind someone like Michael Young. If Young’s ranking was a hat tip to his willingness to move to third base to make room for Elvis Andrus, I can live with that but is the MVP balloting really the place to acknowledge it? After all, Young was not exactly amicable to the move when first presented with it. Fangraphs evaluates the batting and fielding value of players and while Young and Zobrist do not play the same positions, the numbers still make it quite clear who the better player is. The terms in the table are explained here.
| Player | Batting | Fielding | RAR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zobrist | 40 | 26 | 86 | 8.6 |
| Young | 25 | -8 | 39 | 3.9 |
Even if you knock Zobrist a bit for not playing a single position full time, he still dominates Young across the board in all categories and played 6 positions in the field for the Rays this year. Last year’s vote of Jason Bartlett as the team MVP over Evan Longoria was defensible but someone has to explain to me in what universe Michael Young was a more valuable player than Ben Zobrist in 2009. While that is not as bad as the guy picking Miguel Cabrera as the best player in the league, it is disappointing that Zobrist get slighted by the guy that sees him play most. If Jason Bartlett’s 2008 season was good enough for a 5th place vote from Topkin, certainly Zobrist’s amazing 2009 season deserved better than an 8th place vote.
