Tigers ace Verlander first starting pitcher to be MVP since ’86
NEW YORK — Justin Verlander figured time had run out on his chance to become the first starting pitcher in a quarter-century to be voted Most Valuable Player.
Last Tuesday, the 28-year-old Detroit Tigers ace found out about 12:40 p.m. that he was a unanimous winner of the American League Cy Young Award. On Monday, it was closing in on 1 p.m., and he still hadn’t gotten word on the MVP.
“I had told myself that it wasn’t going to happen,” he said. “I figured somebody else got the call.”
Not to worry, there was just a slight delay because Verlander didn’t give the Baseball Writers’ Association of America his telephone number, forcing the BBWAA to relay the news through Brian Britten, the Tigers’ media relations director.
Britten telephoned Verlander at 12:56 p.m., about one hour before the announcement.
“It was just a weight off my shoulders,” Verlander said, “and pure elation, really.”
After winning the AL’s pitching triple crown by going 24-5 with a 2.40 ERA and 250 strikeouts, Verlander received 13 of 28 first-place votes and 280 points. He became the first pitcher voted MVP since Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley in 1992 and the first starting pitcher since Boston’s Roger Clemens in 1986.
“Obviously pitchers are not just written off all of a sudden because they’re pitchers,” Verlander said.
Boston center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury was second with four firsts and 242 points, followed by Toronto right fielder Jose Bautista with five firsts and 231 points, Yankees center fielder Curtis Granderson with 215 and Detroit first baseman Miguel Cabrera with 193.
Recent history has been against pitchers. Since Eckersley’s win, only once had a pitcher finished as high as second.
In 1999, Boston’s Pedro Martinez was 13 points behind Texas catcher Ivan Rodriguez after going 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and 313 strikeouts. Martinez had eight first-place votes to seven for Rodriguez, but two voters left Martinez off their ballots.
“Not even in my wildest dreams had I thought of this,” Verlander said from his home in Virginia. “I want to say this is a dream come true. I can’t say that because my dream had already had come true … to win a Cy Young. And the next dream is to win a World Series. This wasn’t even on my radar until the talk started. And then all of a sudden, it was a this-could-actually-happen type of thing.”
Verlander had the most wins in the majors since Oakland’s Bob Welch went 27-6 in 1990. Verlander pitched his second career no-hitter at Toronto on May 7. Starting with that victory, he went 22-2 with a 1.93 ERA in his next 26 starts.
Verlander’s season reopened debate over whether pitchers can be MVPs.
“I think that a starting pitcher has to do something special to be as valuable or more so than a position player,” Verlander said. “So you have to have a great impact almost every time out to supersede (position players), and it happens on rare occasions, and I guess this year was one of those years.”
Verlander, the 2006 AL Rookie of the Year, joined the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Don Newcombe as the only players to win all three major awards in their careers.
“I think this set a precedent,” Verlander said.
Verlander appeared on only 27 ballots and was omitted by Jim Ingraham of The Herald-News in Ohio, who voted Bautista first. Sheldon Ocker of the Akron Beacon Journal voted Verlander eighth.
Ingraham doesn’t think pitchers should be eligible.
“I’d wrestled with this for a long time. If I was ever going to vote for pitcher for MVP, it would be him this year,” Ingraham said. “He hasn’t appeared in 79 percent of their games, any starting pitcher really doesn’t appear in 79 percent of his team’s games in a year.
“Would you vote for an NFL quarterback for MVP if he only appeared in three of his team’s 16 games, which would be 21 percent? … Another part of it is I think they’re apples and oranges. The guys that are in there every day, there’s a grind to a season that a starting pitcher doesn’t, I don’t think, experience the way the everyday position players do playing 150, 160 games.”
Other pitchers to win MVP and Cy Young in the same year are Newcombe (1956), Los Angeles’ Sandy Koufax (1963), St. Louis’ Bob Gibson and Detroit’s Denny McLain (1968), Oakland’s Vida Blue (1971), Milwaukee’s Rollie Fingers (1981) and Detroit’s Willie Hernandez (1984).
Since Mickey Cochrane (1934), Hank Greenberg (1935, 1940) and Charley Gehringer (1937), all Tigers voted MVP have been pitchers, with Verlander joining Hal Newhouser (1944 and 1945), McLain and Hernandez.