Justin Verlander Wins 2011 AL MVP

As you have likely already heard, Justin Verlander beat out a host of other players for the 2011 AL MVP award.  Verlander earned 13 out of 28 first place votes and 280 points, overall.  The next closest player was Jacoby Ellsbury who earned 5 first place votes and 242 vote points.  The 280 points is the lowest point total by a winner since 2003 when Alex Rodriguez eeked out a victory over Carlos Delgado while tallying 242 vote points (considered by some to be one of the biggest snubs in MVP award history).  Verlander was a worthy MVP, in our opinion.  In fact, when For Baseball Junkies casted its vote for the 2011 BBA Stan Musial Award, we chose Verlander.  It wasn't without debate and we did not have concensus but at the end of the day, there wasn't a better choice on the docket.  The BBA Stan Musial award was awarded to Jose Bautista who finished third in the actual MVP voting.  Despite the BBA's track record for picking winning horses in these races, they missed on this one.  To be fair, we had Ellsbury fifth on our ballot so we weren't perfect, either.  The only major remaining award to be given is the NL MVP, where Matt Kemp was our pick.