Nolan Arenado Finishes Head-Scratching Fifth in NL MVP Vote
Prior to the announcement of the 2016 National League Most Valuable Player, Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports talked about the “ambiguity of value” when it came to why people voted for certain players for MVP honors. That will be part of the discussion why Nolan Arenado of the Colorado Rockies finished fifth in the final NL MVP balloting.
Despite leading the National League in homers and Major League Baseball in RBI and earning his fourth consecutive Gold Glove, Arenado finished behind Kris Bryant, Daniel Murphy, Corey Seager and Anthony Rizzo in the final tally. Arenado earned three second-place votes on his way to 199 total points. Bryant grabbed 29 of the 30 first-place votes (and 415 total points) while runner-up Murphy earned the other first-place vote (and 245 points).
There will be much discussion about the effect of Coors Field and the Rockies’ lack of wins and how that might have taken some votes away from Colorado’s All-Star third baseman. We talked about that in this article after Arenado acknowledged it. Yet Mike Trout earned the American League Most Valuable Player honor on Thursday night without his team advancing to the postseason.
Mark Bowman of MLB.com voted Arenado as the 10th best player in the National League, the only voter to rank Arenado lower than sixth. He was also one of only two voters to name New York Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard on his ballot … and he had him at seventh.
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It’s an example that shows just how ubiquitous the voting for MVP is. You can see the complete voting here and you can see how wide-ranging the voting is and the number of players who earned votes.
As a side note, two other Rockies earned votes in the MVP competition. National League batting champion DJ LeMahieu finished with three ninth-place votes and two 10th-place votes (8 points overall) while Charlie Blackmon earned a 10th-place vote from Patrick Saunders of The Denver Post.
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