The thing about Trout, though, is that he didn't start the season in the majors. The Angels were 7-14 when he was recalled.

Which is still early in the season, but (at least for me) it helps to minimize the "lead the team to the playoffs" argument.

Oh, he's definitely a solid CANDIDATE for MVP, and I could see him getting it in most other years, but triple crown + playoffs is ironclad.

this comment made me look up ted williams' triple crown seasons and compare them to joes gordon and dimaggio, respectively. it's sort of incredible how much better he was at nearly every statistic (old school and sabr-oriented) than both of them in those years. trout and cabrera are way closer in statistics than either gordon or dimaggio were to williams. and, in fact, gordon is much closer to williams than dimaggio. the latter's '47 season isn't even in his career top 5.

Trout should be MVP. defense and base running matter and his hitting wasnt that much below Cabrera to account for the huge gaps in the other areas. Trout is Kobe. Cabrera is Allen Iverson.

Plus...the Angels had a better record in a tougher division.

Trout should be MVP and that doesn't take anything away from Cabrera's season....plus Verlander sure looked like the Tigers MVP last night.

A-Rod benched for Game 5, after being pinch hit for in games 3&4....The end is here....

Ding Ding Ding...This and the fact that Trout performed well down the stretch and wasn't the problem that caused the Angels to miss should eliminate any thought of making or missing the playoffs being a factor in the voting. It will be still be a factor of course because there are a lot of dummies that have votes, but it shouldn't be. I'm not endorsing that as a factor, but just saying...Also isn't it a little strange that a team with Cabrera, Fielder, Austin Jackson, and their pitching staff playing in the worst division in the American League had the worst record among playoff teams? It's kind of silly to begin with to suggest that if a team doesn't make the playoffs how valuable could a player be to take the argument to the extreme as some do. This isn't basketball. One player can't have that much impact on his own. And if you say sure to that but are overly literal about "value" claiming there isn't a lot of value in winning 10 or 11 games more if you still miss the playoffs, then wouldn't you also should take the literal sense of value to include bang for your buck and recognize that Cabrera costs $20+ million and Trout makes league minimum.

I'm not a slave to sabermetric statistics. I don't think that the defense components of WAR are accurate enough to make it a simple math exercise. I also suspect that WAR overly weights defense and speed. You have a chance to impact a game 5 times with your bat but how many times do you have a defensive chance where it's a play that a great player will make but an average one won't. That said, Trout was great across all facets of the game and Cabrera was just great offensive and below average in baserunning and defense, plus CF is just a more important position. Giving Cabrera the MVP based on the triple crown is valuing the rarity of someone achieving it over the actual value of their offensive contributions. Trout actually beat Cabrera on the offensive portion of WAR leaving aside defense and baserunning. It's pretty clear to me that Trout deserves it but I'm not going to be upset if Cabrera wins it. He had a great year.

Oh well. Far better year than my wildest imaginings in March.

Nationals need to hold on.

Sorry O's fans.

Dear god that was awful and i'm not even a Nationals fan. I really dislike the Cardinals.

Ugh, I was rooting Nationals, O's, A's, and Reds.

Apparently my rooting is the kiss of death this year. Yikes.

My level of hate for the four remaining teams on a 1-10 scale. 10 being a desire to plunge them into the depths of hell:

Yankees - 10
Cardinals - 10+, if possible
Giants - 8
Tigers - 5

Means I won't be watching much from this point on. Way to choke Nats. I went to bed with full confidence that I'd have a reason to keep following this. I will say that the drama has been exceptional.

So... you're rooting for the Tigers? Welcome aboard, mang!

They are both fantastic players, but this is baseball. Cabrera was runner-up for MVP in 2010, and was top five in 2009 and 2011. Even last year when Verlander won it. The BBWAA aren't going to give the MVP to a rookie. They'll vote Cabrera.

I'm surprised at how people dismiss the value of winning the triple crown. There's a reason nobody has done it since Yaz - it's HARD. For Cabrera to win it playing in the ballpark he does is even more amazing. Comerica Park is one of the hardest places to hit HRs.

It is strange that Detroit had such a poor record. They lost a LOT of games they should, on paper, have won, against much worse teams like the Royals and Twins and Seattle. But look at their record against other playoff caliber teams, and you can see that they were going to be OK - 3-3 vs. BAL, 4-3 vs. OAK, 12-6 vs. CHW, 4-6 vs. NYY

in 2012, comerica park was the 14th hardest place to hit a HR with a factor of 1.026. oddly enough, angel stadium was 6th hardest at .759.

Where did you get those stats from? According to this unscientific slideshow Detroit is third most difficult, behind PETCO (Padres) field and Citi (Mets) Field.

that slideshow is also from 2010 when comerica was a little more difficult.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor has your updated park factor information.

It's somewhat dismissed because they're arbitrary stats. One that is totally dependent on teammates being on base and the others aren't the best measure of value.

Comerica's lines haven't changed since 2003, when they moved the left field wall in.

The ESPN numbers you have are based on actual hitting statistics at the park, and thus don't truly rank the difficulty of the field itself. A home team that is built for power, like the tigers, will hit more HRs than a team built for speed, and would greatly change the numbers here.

Cabrera hit 28 HR's at home versus 16 on the Road (with less at bats at home). I don't think the home park was a negative for Cabrera.

I'm sure they'll have many many more opportunities to use Strasburg in the post-season. I mean, it's easy to get there and it's going to be a given for the Nats for years to come.

Selig's got his bell cow in the Yanks moving forward so he's happy I'm sure.

Little to no interest the rest of the way.

i had no idea who was in the playoffs but I was glad to hear that #2 is done for the year.

BUT they finished THIRD in that division, tough or not.

After last year, I hate the Cardinals more than I ever have, but they still don't come within several hundred light years of my hate for the Yankees. No other baseball team does, and only the Lakers in any sport are on their same level in terms of my hatred.