It’s always interesting looking at the oddities of voting patterns in the major baseball awards. The writers, to their credit, placed Pujols and Howard correctly but as always it is fascinating to look at the anomalies, such as:

• Who gave Albert Pujols a seventh place vote? I can understand a second or a third, and I was hard pressed to figure out who placed him fourth, but seventh?!?
• The two seventh place votes for Ryan Howard are pretty strange, but the 10th place vote is absurd. That vote must have been cast prior to the All-Star break when Howard was only hitting .234.
• I think it’s pretty cool that Manny Ramirez got 138 points for 53 games in the NL.
• Then again CC Sabathia was the leading pitcher in the MVP-hunt and he did it in 17 games.
• David Wright was the leading Met vote collector clearly beating out Carlos Delgado by 19 points.
• Brad Lidge received the only first place votes (2) not garnered by Pujols and Howard. Interestingly, he received no first-place votes for Cy Young Award and Tim Lincecum, the CYA winner only picked up 9 points for MVP.
• Manny, plus Aramis, and Hanley made three Ramirez’ getting votes. Combined they still finished third.
• Chipper Jones picked up a second place vote meaning someone thought he was the second most valuable player in the league. Meaning, without him the 72-90 Atlanta Braves would have …what, finished in the International League?
• Chase Utley finished 15th having dropped like a rock. He hit .360 with 11 homers in April and didn’t have another month hitting over .294 the rest of the season and didn’t have a month with over 4 homers after May.
• Congrats to Ryan Ludwick. He came out of nowhere to make the All-Star team and get 17 MVP votes.
• When seven writers include Adrian Gonzalez on the ballot (more than Prince Fielder and Derrek Lee combined), you know the ballot is too large.
• Stephen Drew picked up two points, I can’t wait to see if he got more points than his brother, J.D. (who deserves high consideration for MVP – Most Valuable Patient).
• Finally, Nate McLouth, you got one point for the NL MVP which is your consolation prize for still being stuck in Pittsburgh.