National League MVP

It's that time again, kids...time to debate who is the real MVP? The Ryan Howard bandwagon has taken off like a giant, turbo, ESPN-fueled rocket while Albert Pujols is solidly putting together possibly the best season of his career (despite fighting an injury). Both are quite deserving and it makes for an interesting debate. As the season comes to a close, most analysts consider this to be a two-man race, but two good articles on ESPN and Fox Sports both have narrowed it down to a roster of five men who have put up big numbers:

Howard--Phillies
Pujols--Cardinals
Carlos Beltran--Mets
Lance Berkman--Astros
Miguel Cabrera--Marlins

Of course, my St. Louis bias conflicts with who I consider "most valuable" as I've watched The Great Pujols drag this team towards another division title all year. I also just really like the guy. To counteract my favoritism, I'll turn to my old friend Microsoft Excel (which I'm sure you've learned I enjoy playing with) and statistically determine who is top of the class.
It was difficult to determine exactly how to create a comparison that would result in clear evidence of who had a better season than who, so I simply began by comparing their places among the NL League Leaders in particular catagories that most would consider influential to a team's success. As an arbitrary numeric system, I rewarded the players for placing in the top ten in the individual catagories; the point allocation was linear, giving 10 for a first place through 1 for tenth place and no points awarded for placing outside of the top ten. Shown is the rankings and point total: *All stats are accurate as of 9/14/06.

As you can see, Albert has the slight edge over Howard while both are significantly higher in total than the other three contenders. The major flaws with this comparison, though, is that it was near impossible to assign values to important catagories such as stolen bases, strikeouts, and defensive attributes. Neither ESPN.com or Fox Sports allows easy manipulation of fielding stats because it breaks each player down individually per position played and doesn't only include those players who qualify.
Since I am comparing a specific group of players to determine who had the best season among those five I think the better way to look at it is head to head rankings. For example: even though neither Howard or Pujols are in the top ten in the league in fewest strikeouts (and thus received zero points above), I certainly think the fact Pujols has only 43 K's (138th most in the NL) while Howard has 163 K's (2nd most in the NL!) should be considered. Five points were awarded for a first place rank and one point for a fifth place. I figured the following were the ten most useful statistics to use when determining an *all-around* value:

*Rankings for SO's and Errors are 1 for least and 5 for most.

Albert reigns once again, but this time Beltran's stock rises because his base stealing ability and high class defense are counted towards his total. I think this better reflects who is having the best all-around season and displays the players' versatility (or, rather, exposes Howard's dominant dimension of being a power hitter). You can see that the most consistent performer across the board is Pujols. I truly hope the voters consider defense when making their decision and don't lean towards Howard because of last year's outcome. Who knows, they still have a few weeks left and it will be a photo finish.

Verdict: Albert Pujols