Top 5 - AL MVP

Baseball Crank has a poll up regarding who people think should be the AL MVP and Lyford has weighed in with his pick. I started thinking about it so I figured I would post my top 5 choices.

1. David Ortiz, Boston
2. Joe Mauer, Minnesota
3. Manny Ramirez, Boston
4. Derek Jeter, New York
5. Carlos Guillen, Detroit [edit - fixed dumb mistake]

I will admit that Win Shares weighed very heavily in my rankings and I will admit that my picks probably reflect a Red Sox bias. Two things I found interesting when checking AL Win Shares:

1. Ivan Rodriguez (I-Rod) had more Win Shares than Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) - 18 to 16. I don't think that has ever been the case.

2. Kevin Youkilis has the same number of Win Shares as A-Rod. Two things about this - A-Rod will make more than $24 million more than Youkilis and somehow A-Rod actually has more fielding Win Shares (2.2) than Youkilis (2.0) even though A-Rod has 13 more errors than Youkilis. That to me highlights one of the problems with Win Shares (although overall I like them as a guide).