Major League Soccer Postseason Awards: MVP Debate Heats Up As Finalists Announced

Just about every pundit out there has released their MVP picks by now, and you can see there are lots of different definitions of what constitutes an MVP. For some it’s more Ballon d’Ore that should go to the league’s best player. Others take the definition a tad more literally and want to choose the player who is The Most Valuable either to their team or the league.

Andy Edwards of The Daily Wiz took a stab today at applying strict numbers to compare the two players he sees as the clear frontrunners: Edson Buddle and Chris Wondolowski. He looks at the percentage of their teams’ goals each player scored (Wondolowski wins that category), which player had the best goals per 90 minutes (Buddle, by a hair), which player was on the field for the highest percentage of his team’s goals (Wondo again) and then measures how important each players’ goals were (Buddle again).

As Edwards found, the stats don’t always yield a true winner and we’re left having to go with our gut.

I mean, in the end, what else is the point of a “Most Valuable Player” award? We’re all going to choose who we want anyway.

But, wait. Wasn’t that the whole point - to not choose subjectively? Yeah, but what sense would their be in that. It is, after all, a “Most Valuable Player” race.

Edson Buddle is my MLS “Most Valuable Player” for the 2010 season.

A bunch of the other SB Nation editors took a slightly different tact. We opted to try a little group think, and I’m not sure we yielded any clearer results.

Heck, during our chat we could never even settle on what the standard should be.

Martin (Shatzer, Black And Red United): Who would you say the award has traditionally gone to? The best player or the most valuable player to his team?Kevin (McCauley, SB Nation soccer): The player who I think played the best. That means some combination of statistics and skill displayed. For instance, while Wondolowski’s goal total is nuts, does anyone really think that he was the most outstanding player this season?

Dave (Clark, Sounder at Heart): but it is the MVP, not Player of YearKevin: There isn’t a player of the year award, unfortunately.

Leon (UZ, Burgundy Wave): Exactly why MVP usually has to be taken as a player of the year awardChest (Rockwell, B&R United): it has traditionally gone to the guy that most people perceived as the best player, looking over the history of it (except for 2004, which was utter nonsense and still upsets me)

Ferreira was a popular choice among our editors, as were Chris Wondolowski and Landon Donovan. Even Sebastian Le Toux received an impassioned plea from The Brotherly Game’s Scott Kessler. Interestingly, no one gave Edson Buddle — who is, of course, one of the three actual finalists — much consideration.

The thing all of this discussion highlighted was just how wide open this race seems to be. There are at least seven or eight players that deserve consideration.

I then calculated how many points each player contributed to his team’s total by subtracting each player’s goals and assists from each game. So, for instance, if a player had one goal or assist in a tie, the player was credited with one point since without his contribution his team would have theoretically lost. If a player had two goals and his team won by one goal, that player received three points. Whether or not the player scored the winning goal was not particularly important in this measurement.

Using this system, the top player in MLS was Le Toux who contributed 23 points. The next highest total was Ferreira’s 22. Buddle (21) and Fredy Montero (20) were the only other two players to account for at least 20 points and after Wondolwski’s 18, no other player contributed as many as 15. Landon Donovan, somewhat surprisingly, only had 14 despite leading the league in combined goals (7) and assists (16).

In the end, I felt totally at peace with my vote going this way: 1. Ferreira, 2. Montero, 3. Wondolowski.