MLB

Pedro Martinez Wonders If Maybe The Writers Who Left Him Off The 1999 MVP Ballot Weren’t “Prejudiced Or Racist”

Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander won the American league MVP this year. Pitchers don’t usually win MVPs (they don’t play every day and have their own award after all), but no position player stood out enough to wrest the award from Verlander – and he really did have a phenomenal season. He led the league in wins (as dumb a stat as that is). He led the league in ERA. He led the league in strikeouts. He led the league in adjusted ERA, which accounts for external factors like the stadium in which one plays. He led the league in innings, so he was a workhorse, too. As far as pitching MVPs go, he’s an easy choice to live with.

Some, though, have mixed feelings about Verlander’s victory – and not because giving the MVP to a pitcher is tricky business. No, one person in particular sees Verlander win the MVP and wonders what might have been – because the last time a pitcher was a serious candidate to be MVP, he was at the center of it, he was even better than Verlander was this year…and he didn’t win.

“He” is Pedro Martinez and he was talking about 1999 (when he finished a close second). Now, there’s a strong case to be made that he deserved the MVP that year – he led the league in wins, ERA, and strikeouts too, and his adjusted ERA that year (243) easily outpaces Verlander’s 170 in 2011. Pedro was unreal that year, and we don’t blame him for being rankled…but one thing he said about that year’s voting left us scratching our heads a bit:

“I was kind of pissed off at first [when Verlander won the MVP], but then I went to realize that [the voters] are going to have to live with that label on their back. If anyone calls them prejudiced or racist for not voting for me, everyone will have to understand that it’s their responsibility for not voting for me at that time.”

Emphasis ours, because wait a second…is anyone calling writers that? Was anyone calling writers that back in 1999? Or did Pedro just invent this out of thin air? Our guess is that if there was any “prejudice” involved, it was the standard “pitchers only play once every five games” argument. A main reason for that is this: if there was any racism involved in the anti-Pedro faction, it was a really weird bit of racism. Why? Well, the guy who did win the MVP that year was…the Rangers’ Ivan Rodriguez.

Pedro did go on to give Verlander credit, though, saying, “I was really happy that the pitchers who really deserved it like Justin finally got the monkey off their backs.” And again, Pedro has a right to wonder how he could have arguably the greatest stretch for a pitcher in baseball history (1999 and 2000, when he might have been even better than the year before, especially, but 1997-2003 more broadly), and never come away with baseball’s highest individual honor.

The prejudice and racism stuff just struck us as weird, since as far as we can tell, it came completely out of nowhere, and also didn’t seem to make any sense. But hey, if it leads to more people looking back and appreciating just how unbelievable Pedro was at his peak, hey – it’s not all bad.

Getty photo, by Ezra Shaw