2007 NL MVP Crowned - Jimmy Rollins of the Phillies
Well, in my opinion (and many other readers of this blog), the best man won the National League MVP award for 2007!!! Congratulations to Jimmy Rollins who had an absolutely amazing season this year with a .296 batting average, 30 home runs, 94 RBIs and 41 steals from the leadoff spot, helping the Philadelphia Phillies rally from a big September deficit to win the NL East over the Mets who had led the division most of the year. He led the league with 139 runs and 20 triples, vaulting the superstar into the 30/30/30 club as well as the 20/20/20/20 club. Rollins was the second consecutive Phillies player to win the MVP following Ryan Howard’s win last year.
Jimmy Rollins didn’t just cruise by on the reputation he set himself up for when he spent the offseason bragging about how his Philadelphia Phillies were the team to beat in the National League East. His 139 runs and 88 extra-base hits set records for shortstops. Everyone made such a big deal of Curtis Granderson’s 20-20-20-20 – doubles, triples, home runs and stolen bases. Well, Rollins went 35-20-30-40 and set career highs in batting average at .296 and slugging percentage at .531. And he set a major league record with only 716 appearances at the plate. Still, to the disappointment of all Phillies fans, Jimmy Rollins didn’t make this year’s All-Star team, instead, he was overlooked for J.J. Hardy, probably as a punishment for his grandiose pre-season predictions. The joke of it all is that Hardy didn’t even get one single single MVP vote among the 320 votes cast.
The Gold Glove and Silver Slugger shortstop, Jimmy Rollins, received 16 of 32 first-place votes and finished with 353 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Matt Holliday, who led the Colorado Rockies to their surprising sweep to the World Series got 11 first-place votes and 336 points. Milwaukee Brewers’ slugger Prince Fielder came in third, with five first-place votes and 284 points. Rounding out the voting was New York Mets third baseman David Wright who finished fourth in the balloting and Jimmy Rollins’ teammate and last year’s NL MVP, Ryan Howard came in fifth. Braves slugger Chipper Jones, the 1999 winner, was sixth and Padres ace Jake Peavy, who won the Cy Young Award unanimously last week, finished seventh in the balloting.
I’ve been amazed with Rollins support from the Philadelphia fans after attending my first few games at Citizen’s Bank Park this season. As a transplant from South Florida (and a former Marlin’s fan), who now lives in Delaware in the summers, my only option has been to make the 2 1/2 hour drive to Philadelphia if I wanted to see live baseball and I’ll say, the Phillies fans are much different from the fans I was used to in Miami, and those Phillies fans are contagious. So contagious, I made sure to be at all the last games of the Phillies home stands against the Braves and the Nationals. I even caught some video of Ryan Howard hitting a home run and some video of Jimmy Rollins after a home run against the Braves, rounding the bases with the stadium rocking and chanting “MVP - MVP - MVP”. You can see the video on the BaseballTalkPro Forums.
Congratulations to Jimmy Rollins and the Philadelphia Phillies. I’ll be attending a lot more Phillies games next year for sure.
Any Phils fans who care to discuss, feel free to express yourselves and show some support on our forum :
Jimmy Rollins wins the NL MVP
Oh, and in other news, Alex Rodriguez won the AL MVP (who cares).
November 24th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
It seems like Jimmy Rollins has escaped my radar. To be honest I don’t even know much about him, maybe its cause howard is getting all the buzz on the phillies. I thought Holliday was nearly guaranteed MVP this year.