An ESPN poll I saw today offered four candidates for AL MVP - Garrett Anderson, Carlos Delgado, A-Rod, and Manny. Of late, there's been talk of an emerging fifth candidate - Red Sox 1B/DH David Ortiz. Looking at the numbers, Ortiz tends to lag behind the four - he's last among the five in batting average and OPS, middle of the road with OBP and slugging percentage. With things like hits, RBI, and home runs, he also lags, but has played in significantly fewer games (124 to a range of 147-157 for the others).

So I decided to do a little mathematical snooping (with apologies to Rob Neyer, SABRmertricians everywhere, and pretty much the entire math-using world). I took the hits, home run, and RBI categories, and worked them out for all five players both per game and per at bat.

Turns out that Ortiz has the lowest average number of hits per game (and per at bat) of the five. What's really interesting, though, is that he is fourth in home runs per game (third in HR per at bat), and yet is second in RBI per game and at bat (lagging behind Carlos Delgado in both cases).

I'm not sure what this says, but it does suggest to me that Ortiz gets more out of his at bats than most folks. I do wonder what his numbers would be like if he didn't start the year platooning with Jeremy Giambi (remember him?), but it may have helped him ease into the situation not being the every day guy (thinking back to Tony Clark).

Ortiz also has the benefit of finishing strong, as he's hit a HR in each of the last two games, and had the sense to hit the game winner last night (and, oddly, trumping the drama of the 3 run job that Todd Walker hit to tie the game, making Ortiz the Fisk to Walker's Bernie Carbo).

So consider this a first, somewhat lame attempt to draft Ortiz for the AL MVP award. Feel free to add to the argument or offer counter arguments, as this whole baseball stat manipulation thing is new to me.