The 2005 NL MVP award

Congratulations to Albert Pujols on winning the 2005 National League MVP Award. It's about time he won one after finishing in the top four during 2001-2004 when a Barry Bonds juiced-up on steroids stole 4 in a row. I probably would have voted for Pujols if given the opportunity as he put up great numbers this year. However, I am surprised at the final voting results:

Player Team 1st place 2nd place 3rd place Total votes
Albert Pujols STL 18 14 - 378
Andruw Jones ATL 13 17 2 351
Derrek Lee CHC 1 1 30 263

Here are the respctive season stats for the top three:
G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB K SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
Pujols 161 591 129 195 38 2 41 117 97 65 16 2 .330 .430 .609 1.039
Jones 160 586 95 154 24 3 51 128 64 112 5 3 .263 .347 .575 .922
Lee 158 594 120 199 50 3 46 107 85 109 15 3 .335 .418 .662 1.080

I am not surprised that Pujols won - I figured beforehand that Pujols would win a close vote. However, I thought that Pujols would barely beat out Lee for the award, not Jones. Look at the stats above and you'll see that one player's stats lag far behind the other two. That player is, of course, Andruw Jones. Jones hit a pedestrian .263 for the year, 67 points below Pujols and a whopping 72 points below Lee. Some people will point out that Jones hit 51 homers. While that is an impressive stat, his slugging percentage was still well below that of Pujols and Lee. Jones has more RBIs, but that's most likely because Atlanta had more runners on base throughout the season when he came to the plate that did Pujols or Lee.

When I see results like this, it really makes me wonder if the people doing the voting are retarded or are simply holding grudges against certain players. It makes me think of the 1995 AL MVP voting where Albert Belle was absolutely robbed by Mo Vaugh, a player with far inferior stats who played on a worse team than Belle.