I’ve heard a lot of arguments for who should be MVP, on radio, on TV, in print and on the web and it has usually been between Ryan Bruan and Matt Kemp, so I feel that now it’s time for me to chime in on this debate.
First, there’s this stupid argument about Bruan playing in “pressure situations” for most of the season because he was in a playoff race. I find that ludicrous you try playing on a team that’s going nowhere and put up numbers for no one but your own pride. If anything there’s more pressure, especially on a team that was as offensively challenged as the Dodgers.
Second let’s look at protection, who did Ryan Bruan have hitting behind him? Prince freakin’ Fielder! That’s right, the guy who finished second in the NL behind Kemp for HR’s and RBI’s with 38 HR and 120 RBI, who had a 50 HR Season, who drove in 141 RBI’s in 2009 , yeah that Prince Fielder. Do you know who hit behind Matt Kemp? No? It was no one as good as Fielder let me tell ya. There was Uribe, Loney, Blake, Rivera, Ethier, Barajas, Sands and I don’t think any two of those even gets close to the numbers Fielder put up. So if anyone had more pressure on them this whole season, not just in the playoff race, it was Matt Kemp and he performed quite well.
Lastly, here’s one I have not heard and which I feel really changes things. Switch Matt Kemp and Ryan Braun for the season and who’s numbers change the most? If you say Kemp ding ding ding, you’re a winner. Why do I say that? Easy, just look at the numbers he had when just Juan Rivera hit behind him in the 2nd half. The majority of the time Matt Kemp had Rivera behind him, he was 3rd and Rivera was 4th and in that he had 11 HR’s in only 35 games with 34 RBI’s and scored 38 runs as opposed to 77 runs in 126 games hitting 4th he also only had 1 GDP as opposed to 15 hitting 4th, he was a much better hitter and all around player and not just a slugger. Having even a little protection behind Kemp made him better and if he had a guy like Fielder behind him, I can’t even imagine the numbers he would’ve put up.
There are other things as well, Kemp is a better fielder, he plays a more physically demanding position, so putting up bigger numbers is actually more difficult because he does a lot more running than Bruan, Kemp was THE offense for the Dodgers, Bruan was a cog, etc.
Who cares about record, who cares about whether or not a team makes the playoffs, how VALUABLE was the player to his team and no one was more valuable to his team in the whole of baseball than Matt Kemp.
Buy Los Angeles Dodgers Tickets | Buy Los Angeles Dodgers Apparel
