Mike Celizic

I don’t know when it happened, but the award that says Most Valuable Player doesn’t seem to be as much about value anymore as it is about statistics. Maybe they ought to just change the name to the “Best Stats by a Position Player Award” so we can handicap these things more easily.

Because if the National League MVP voters had gone the way their American League counterparts did, Derrek Lee should have been your MVP, even though his team, the luckless Chicago Cubs, finished fourth in their division behind the St. Louis Cardinals, Houston Astros and Milwaukee Brewers.

Some would argue that if you can’t haul your team past Milwaukee, you don’t deserve to be most valuable anything, and I wouldn’t disagree. In terms of sheer value to a team that won a division, I don’t think you can do better than Andruw Jones, without whom the Atlanta Braves, who won the NL East by two games over Philadelphia, probably wouldn’t have made the playoffs.

Jones led the majors in home runs with 51, and he was the only player to break the 50 barrier in the year that baseball was serious — but not serious enough for Congress — about steroids. The Atlanta center fielder also won his eighth straight Gold Glove and led the NL in RBIs with 128.

If I were voting, I’d give it to Jones. But I’m silly enough to think the award is about value, not about statistics.

And, since I’m not voting, and, judging by how the vote went in the AL, where David Ortiz lost to Alex Rodriguez because A-Rod had a higher batting average and played the field, I have to say that Lee is the man who is going to win.

And the odd man out should have been Pujols, who is merely one of the best players the game has ever seen over his first five years in the league.

It was a very tight race among three magnificent candidates. Let’s start with Pujols, who played the entire year on a damaged heel that hindered his running.

Prince Albert hit .330, which is actually two points under his lofty lifetime average, had 38 doubles, two triples, 41 homers, 129 runs, 117 RBIs, 97 walks, a .430 on-base percentage and a .609 slugging percentage.

This is not the stat line of a mortal, and the fact that it’s merely a typical year for Pujols is the measure of his greatness. He anchored a Cardinals lineup that was beset by injuries all season; he carried St. Louis from start to finish.

But the Cards also won the NL Central by 11 games and their 100 wins were 10 more than the next-best team in the league, Atlanta. St. Louis starter Chris Carpenter has already won the Cy Young, and it can be argued that Carpenter and the rest of the Cardinals pitchers were more valuable all year long than even Pujols.

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