Category talk:Awards

Alan Trammell

well, no it was George Bell, but in one of the biggest travesties of baseball award voting, Bell got the MVP and Tramm got the shaft.

Did Bell have a great season?? Have to say yes to that. In the year known as the "Juiced Year", where Wade Boggs managed to hit 24 hr, George pounded 47 (career bests otherwise was 31, then 28), hit .308 and drove in a monster 147 runs, along with an equally monster for the time .957 OPS. Never good with the leather, his defense is in both this year and his career politely termed as, well..Manny Ramirez like...

George did lead his team on a pennant hunt that lasted until the last day of the season...when his team lost and choked away a late season cushion to...you guesssed it, Alan Trammell's Tigers. The Jays loss of the pennant was in no small part due to Bell's collapse in the late season and Trammell's clutch hitting.

Tramm's Tigers trailed Bell's Jays by 3.5 games with a week left in the season...and managed to beat the Jays 4 times that week, and to many, cement the MVP award along with the AL East Pennant.

Alas, despite beating Bell's Jays, despite having better overall numbers, despite being a Gold Glove caliber fielder, and a clubhouse leader, in the closest MVP voting in history (332-311), Tramm, in a sign of things to come from the Baseball Media gods for he and his fellow 80's Tigers, got the shaft.

Alan posted a HUGE season in 1987, especially for a SS in the pre-Steroid, pre-A-Rod/Tejada 3b sized monsters playing SS.....hitting .343 with 205 hits 28 HR 105 RBI 21-23 sb attempts a .402 OB% and a OPS of .953...certainly his best offensive season and one of the best by a SS in MLB history, even to this day. Alan also led the AL in a new stat many see as the best indicator of performance, called Win Shares, with 35, whole Bell placed 9th with 26.

Many in the baseball world call this the worst travesty of MVP voting in history...but ignoring all of the statistical evidence that weighs in Alan's favor, or the fact that he willed his team to one of the most exciting last week head to head battle triumphs for the post season in history with Bell's Jays, anyone who used their eyes and brains that saw these two play have no doubt as to who was the better player for the year of 1987...for that matter for their careers either...and in Alan's case it continues as the skipper of the same Tiger club he became an Icon of...while Bell, after a career ended at the early age of 33 has faded to obscurity...known more for stealing an MVP than anything else in his career...