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We have reached the end of the SB Nation awards season, though admittedly I am less enthused about the entire process than I was at the beginning of the week. Yes, it's cool that Matt Kemp won the SB Nation National League MVP, joining Clayton Kershaw to give the Dodgers the two major NL awards. But the participation level was poor.
Each SB Nation team site was permitted two votes for awards in their league, and the five non-affiliated sites (Baseball Nation, Minor League Ball, Beyond the Box Score, Fake Teams, and Roto Hardball) had one vote in each league. But upon further examination of the ballots, four of the 16 NL sites didn't even bother to vote (McCovey Chronicles, Bucs Dugout, Viva El Birdos, and Fish Stripes), and the folks at Gaslamp Ball only submitted a single ballot, and used the ballot to make some sort of a statement.
[Update - Grant Brisbee wrote in our comments section, "I never saw the email. Google Groups snafu. It’s the first year I didn’t vote. I enjoy it every year."]
It's not that these awards should have some great level of importance attached to them, but it would be nice if a modicum of effort was uniformly given so we could take them a little more seriously.
Here are the results of 28 National League MVP ballots:
| Rank | Name | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9th | 10th | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Matt Kemp | 21 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 353 | ||||||
| 2 | Ryan Braun | 7 | 19 | 2 | 285 | |||||||
| 3 | Joey Votto | 8 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 176 | |||||
| 4 | Justin Upton | 1 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 140 | ||
| 5 | Prince Fielder | 2 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 119 | |
| 6 | Troy Tulowitzki | 3 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 91 | |||
| 7 | Jose Reyes | 1 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 86 | |||
| 8 | Roy Halladay | 1 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 85 | |||
| 9 | Clayton Kershaw | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 56 | |||
| 10 | Albert Pujols | 1 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 51 | |||
| 11 | Lance Berkman | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 44 | ||||
| 12 | Shane Victorino | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 41 | |||
| 13 | Cliff Lee | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 33 | ||||||
| 14 | Andrew McCutchen | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 26 | |||||
| 15 | Pablo Sandoval | 2 | 1 | 1 | 19 | |||||||
| 16 | Brandon Phillips | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 17 | ||||||
| 17 | Matt Holliday | 2 | 1 | 12 | ||||||||
| 18 | Michael Morse | 1 | 2 | 5 | ||||||||
| 19 | Carlos Beltran | 1 | 4 | |||||||||
| 19 | Mike Stanton | 1 | 2 | 4 | ||||||||
| 21 | Ryan Roberts | 2 | 2 | |||||||||
| 22 | Ian Kennedy | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| 22 | Hunter Pence | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
| 22 | Raul Ibanez | 1 | 1 |
Fourteen points were awarded for a first place vote, then nine points for second, eight for third, all the way down to one point for a 10th place vote.
Kershaw finished ninth in the voting. I was one of two voters to give Kershaw a third place vote. Here are our ballots:
- Me: Kemp, Braun, Kershaw, Halladay, Lee, Votto, Fielder, Reyes, Tulowitzki, Pujols
-
Phil Gurnee: Kemp, Braun, Fielder, Upton, Berkman, Holliday, Pujols, Votto, Halladay
The real MVP award, for which there is an actual trophy given by the Baseball Writers Association of America, will be announced on Tuesday, November 22.