Most Valuable Pipsqueak

This week major league baseball finally finished the long and unnecessarily drawn out process of handing out their season awards. The seemingly unending process came to an close with the announcement of the American League's Most Valuable Player. The announcement came as no real surprise, front runner Dustin Pedroia won the award garnering 16 of the 28 first place votes. Coming into the season the idea of Dustin Pedroia winning this award would have been laughable. Listed at 5-9 (probably closer to 5-6) and 180 lbs., playing second base and hitting near the top of the order, Pedroia hardly fits the mold for AL MVP. This award is usually reserved for guys with power numbers. Overwhelming home run and RBI totals usually carry the day, and ultimately it was surprising that they didn't again this year.

Pedroia's numbers are great, there's no getting around it. He hit .326, with 17 HRs, 83 RBI, a .376 OBP, .493 slugging, tied for the league lead with 213 hits and 54 doubles. He won the gold glove at second base, was successful on 20 of 21 steal attempts and lets not forget he played in 157 games (a stat I think should carry weight for an MVP award). Perhaps most impressively he only struck out 52 times in 653 at bats.

These numbers are certainly impressive and from a second year, under sized second baseman they are incredible, but Pedroia didn't win the award because of his numbers, he won because of 18 key at bats in August.

The sole reason Pedroia won the MVP award instead of Morneau or Youkilis is because Pedroia had a signature stretch. A week of baseball where he played at such a high level that he caught the entire country's attention. With Manny Traded and Ortiz, Lowell and Youk all injured Pedroia was thrown into the clean up spot for a week with Boston battling to stay well positioned for the playoffs. Not only was Pedroia serviceable in the role, he was incredible. He went 12-18 with 2 HRs and 4 Doubles. He slugged 1.222 and seemed to carry the entire Boston Red Sox team on his back for a time. Every sports center seemed to focus on his rise and ESPN started asking every expert they could find if Pedroia had positioned himself to win the MVP.

It was this stretch that made voters for get about the power numbers, or the fact that Youkilis was arguably the most valuable Red Sox player this year. For that one week Pedroia wasn't just good, he was great and the whole sports nation took notice.

But regardless of why he won, its great that he did. Nice to see the little guy come out on top, and with Stephen Surry mere months from winning Player of the Year in college ball maybe the little guys is getting ready to assert themselves and big factors across all of sports.