The Twins don't play until this evening, but today is going to be a busy one for me with several stories I'm working on. I wasn't planning to blog so early, but I had to get this out for local consumption.
Remember the one voter who selected Detroit's Miguel Cabrera over Joe Mauer for AL MVP? In this piece by the NYT's Tyler Kepner, that voter explains his decision.
I'm no stranger to controversial voting (see Martinez, Pedro 1999). While I would have voted for Mauer (didn't have the MVP vote last year) this shows how someone can look at things differently. The problem I have with his lineup comparison was that the Twins were missing a former MVP and their cleanup hitter in the heat of the pennant race in Justin Morneau. They didn't have a real No. 2 hitter (although O-Cab wasn't as bad as I thought he was going to be) and Joe Crede's back was a mess.
I would have gladly taken Curtis Granderson, Placido Polanco and Brandon Inge off that Tigers team - and the first baseman, of course.
Anyway.....what say you?
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La Velle E. Neal III has covered baseball for the Star Tribune since 1998 (the post-Knoblauch era). Born and raised in Chicago, he grew up following the White Sox and hating the Cubs. He attended both the University of Illinois and Illinois-Chicago and began his baseball writing career at the Kansas City Star. He can be heard occasionally on KFAN radio, lending his great baseball mind to Paul Allen and other hosts.
Phil Miller covered three seasons of Twins baseball, but that was at a different ballpark for a different newspaper. Now Miller returns to the baseball beat after joining the Star Tribune as the Gopher football writer in 2010, and he won't miss the dingy dome for a minute. In addition to the Twins and Gophers, Miller covered the Utah Jazz and the NBA for six years at The Salt Lake Tribune.
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