Fact: Dustin Pedroia of the Boston Red Sox was voted AL MVP.



Informed opinion: Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins was the best player in the league.



Back in September, while the season still raged, I argued in the print column that Mauer was a better MVP choice than Justin Morneau. Nothing that happened in the season's final few days changed that opinion, and as we gain more distance from the regular season it becomes ever more apparent that Mauer wasn't just the best player on the Twins, he was the best in the league.



The writers didn't see it that way when they cast their ballots immediately upon season's end. Morneau was second to Pedroia; Mauer came in fourth.



This outcome isn't a surprise. Pedroia isn't a slugger, and he's the first second baseman to win the AL award since Nellie Fox in 1959, but all the other things that the writers tend to go for are there:



1) His team made the playoffs.



2) I Nobody saw Pedroia's big season coming; Mauer's done this before. (See Pedroia's 2008 stats here.) (For that matter, here are Joe Mauer's stats.)The writers like surprises. Mauer may well add home runs to his stat line in future seasons, and on some level the electorate in these votes appear to think: If he gets the MVP when he hits 9 homers, we'll have to give it to him when he hits 25 too.



3) There was no truly big season from an established star on a playoff team. Or, for that matter, on any team — but that will be the subject of a future post.



4) Mauer's superiority tends to show best in obscure, analytical stats, such as win shares.



One thing that has happened in the weeks since the votes were cast: At least some of the Twin Cities writers have started to grasp the subtle advantages of Mauer. First Joe Christensen filed this post on his Star Tribune blog on Oct. 10. Today LaVelle Neal III, in his blog, conceded that he got too wrapped up in RBI and put Mauer too low on his ballot.



This matters, because the writers share opinions. The voters who cover the Seattle Mariners, say, don't see the Twins all that often, and if the Twins beat writers tell them they think Morneau's the MVP pick from the Twins, that's bound to affect their rankings.



We all learn something new all the time, or at least we do if we're paying attention. There's a chance the metro writers are learning something that will show up in future MVP votes.







e-mail Edward Thoma