Yankees fans everywhere weep: Joe Mauer, catcher for the Minnesota Twins, has won this season's American League Most Valuable Player Award, beating out Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira (he also received more votes than Miguel Cabrera and Kendry Morales, but neither of them play in New York, so we'll move along).
Joe Mauer Beats Yankees At Something, Wins 2009 A.L. MVP
Mauer received 27 of the 28 first-place votes, with the other vote going to Cabrera, meaning a witch hunt has already begun to discover who was crazy enough not to give Mauer a first-place vote.
Mauer became the fifth player in Twins history to win the MVP Award. He joined teammate Justin Morneau, who took home the honor in 2006, as well as Zoilo Versalles (1965) Harmon Killebrew (1969) and Rod Carew (1977).
He also became just the second catcher in the past 33 years to be named MVP. Texas' Ivan Rodriguez (1999) is the only backstop besides Mauer to take home the honor since Yankees catcher Thurman Munson won it in 1976. The last catcher to win National League MVP honors was Cincinnati's Johnny Bench in 1972.
The 26-year old catcher began his season on the DL, and didn’t appear in his first game until May 1, but quickly made up for lost time, hitting a home run in his first at-bat. He ended 2009 leading the AL in AVG (.356), OBP (.444), SLG (.587), OPS (1.031) OPS+ (a comically-good 170).
“The year Joe had was just incredible,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said last week. “It’s almost hard to wrap your mind around where he now stands in the history of the game. I know what he means to our ballclub and our organization. But I think everybody nationally is starting to get a little bit of a feel now how really, really good this guy is. I think you just top it off by giving him an MVP award, which he rightfully deserves.”
Check in with both Twinkie Town and Pinstripe Alley for more analysis and reaction.
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