| Leslie Monteiro. 22nd August, 2006 - 2:38 am
 On Wednesday August 9th, Justin Morneau became the first Twin to hit his 30th home run of the season since Gary Gaetti (31 home runs that year), Tom Brunansky (32 home runs that year), and Kent Hrbek (34 home runs that year) in 1987. This home run is not only significant with him accomplishing this milestone. It is also significant because this home run gave the Twins a 4-3 win against the Tigers as they took the series against the AL Central Division leaders on the road. Twins fans, Twins television announcers, and the Twin Cities media has started talking about him being the American League’s Most Valuable Player after that performance.
He is a very deserving candidate who has been the reason why the Twins are even in the wild-card race. Everyone can talk about how Johan Santana and Francisco Liriano played a big role in the Twins winning games and it is a good point because the Twins starting pitching last year was so dominant, but they had nothing to show for it because the offense was abysmal all around. This year is different because Morneau has finally played to his potential and he has been the big reason why the Twins score runs and win games.
He has finally arrived as a major league hitter in his second season and he is the team’s best clutch hitter. He has got the big home runs and game-winning hits in tight games such as tie games or a 1-0 or 2-1 games. Ever since he hit that game-winning two-run homerun against the Athletics at Oakland on June 2nd, he has made it a habit to come up huge in these types of situations. The more he does well in these situations, the more he will excel easily in the next few years.
He has come a long way from last year and there are a couple of reasons why he is a different player than he was last year. For one thing, he has experience of how to approach a certain pitcher and he knows when to swing at the pitcher’s pitches. For example, he does not hack at every pitch out there rather makes the pitcher work by fouling off pitches or he just figures it out if the pitch is a ball that he cannot swing.
Another reason for his success is that he does not have to go out and hit home runs. He is finding out that getting base hits to drive runners home or hitting deep enough to make an out as the runner score is as good as hitting a home run. He is also using the field well to hit the ball and most of his outs are either hard-hitting outs or fly outs now. That is a mark of a good hitter and fans should have realized that he was learning the game in his first full season in the majors last year. He had lot of work to do, but they got so spoiled at what he did in his call up two years ago. He was hitting home runs at a torrid pace when he was promoted to the majors to the point everyone expected a lot out of him last season. He certainly was going to have to make an adjustment at how other pitchers had to pitch to him so it was expected that he would have a rough time in his first full season. He also had health problems to start the season and he could not get himself settled in due to food poisoning that he suffered prior to spring training and he had that concussion on a Ron Villone pitch to his head in the very third game of the 2005 season at Seattle. He just had a hard time with getting himself ready mentally with those symptoms.
People can talk about what David Ortiz has done for the Boston Red Sox. His performance get overexposed by ESPN, which loves the Boston Red Sox based on the amount of games that the network shows not to mention talking about them in several of their sports shows. Ortiz’s heroics should be mentioned, but with that said, he does not have to carry his team considering the Red Sox have lot of good hitters out there in the lineup. There are not many easy outs in that lineup, but the Twins’ lineup gives Morneau a better case of why he should be the MVP. Their lineup is filled with role players like Nick Punto, Josh Rabe, Jason Tyner, Luis Rodriguez, and Jason Bartlett. Those guys are not going to keep other managers and other pitchers awake at night.
He will get an opportunity to prove to the voters that he deserves this award in the next few weeks. Twins are playing the White Sox for two weeks at Minnesota and at Chicago so he will get an opportunity to make his case against the current Wild-Card division leaders. He will also get a shot to make a name of himself when the Twins play at New York and Boston in September. It is up to him to come through for him to get those votes and he will have to come through if the Twins make the playoffs because Francisco Liriano is not going to save them with him being out for the year most likely.
The AL MVP winner should be awarded based on which player leads their team to a playoff berth. The Twins were not expected to do anything this season and with Liriano being out for the year, Morneau should be the MVP if he leads his team to a playoff berth. As great as David Ortiz has been, he cannot receive that award if his team does not make the playoffs, which will likely happen. |
