As you may have heard, Joe Mauer won the 2009 AL MVP, an award the be-sideburned backstop certainly earned. But since it's not MLB awards season without controversy, there's a good deal of fallout regarding that single miscast vote. Keizo Konishi, about whom I had heard absolutely nothing prior to this afternoon, saw fit to make Miguel Cabrera his choice for the AL MVP, putting Mauer 2nd. And if you're anything like me, you immediately wondered "Keiz-who?" Dave Cameron, of Fangraphs fame, agrees: "I probably read more about Seattle-based baseball writing than anyone alive. I've never heard of Keizo Konishi," as per his Twitter. Which by the way, Zach, you should take that up with him.

Now, as a young blogger, it's practically expected of me that I mercilessly mock the dinosaur news writer whose voting is beyond the pale, and so on and so forth. But maybe because it's a nice day out, or maybe because I go home for Thanksgiving tomorrow, or mayhaps the singing of a small village has helped me realize that Christmas isn't about presents after all, I don't have the heart to lambast Konishi. Or, for that matter, complain about how Ben Zobrist and Zack Greinke were severely underrepresented. Rather, I shall seek to understand him. And so, dear reader, who is Keizo Konishi and why did he vote for Miggy C?

Well, I'll be honest: I can't fathom why. It's an utterly indefensible choice; it's objectively incorrect. But then, are you really surprised*? People virtually expect at least one writer to flub a ballot. But why Cabrera? Why not pick, as I'm sure we all expected at least one writer to do, Teixeira or Jeter? Why not Ben Zobrist, or Zack Greinke, if you want to endear yoruself to the SABR community? In fact, why not Ichiro, as Konishi has covered Ichiro's entire professional career is apparently the only writer to whom Ichiro speaks? Can I keep writing paragraphs that are 66% questions?

*What does surprise me is that it wasn't a Tigers homer who was in the bag for Cabrera, similar to what we saw with Steve Kornacki's selection of Justin Verlander for AL Cy, or Tom Gage and Tim Hawkins voting Magglio Ordonez for MVP in '07. The Detroit chapter rather earned themselves a reputation for those picks.

Maybe Konishi's earlier work will be of some assistance is getting to the bottom of this mystery. Well, it might, but...Konishi may be more like Keyser Soze than I let on earlier. Because on the first page of Google results for his name, there is exactly one original piece, and it's from 2005. (Read it here, if you'd like. I'll wait.) His name only comes up in the context of people mentioning that he is the one who voted for Cabrera. Which seems to me rather unfortunate given that his career is based around people knowing his name and his work, but then I'm hardly in a position to judge. So then, could this be some kind of publicity stunt? Maybe some further research (scanning page 2 of the results) will turn up answers.

Well, no. There's just more mentions of his voting for Cabrera.  Hopefully the guy writes a column to explain himself, because I literally have no idea what could have happened to make him vote this way. I can't even suspect some kind of handshake agreement between the two; why would Cabrera be making a deal with Konishi, of all people? But maybe that's the genius of all of this; maybe Konishi and Cabrera are Kobayashi and Kint, co-conspirators that have us all fooled. I mean, that's as reasonable as the actual vote was, right? And of course, then, it would only be fitting that Konishi goes back to stateside irrelevance. In Verbal Kint's words: "and like that...he's gone."

Comments (11)

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written by Zach Sanders, November 23, 2009

Dave does read more than I do, even though he's on the East coast.

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Dolla Dolla Bills.
written by whhhhaaat, November 23, 2009

I imagine the fact that MC get's $200K for his place in the rankings may have something to do with this. I mean if one vote can put you up there why not slide a certain writer a couple grand for his trouble...

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written by c302, November 23, 2009

Keizo Konishi is a japanese journalist exclusively covering Ichiro Suzuki. He wrote numerous articles and books on Ichiro Suzuki in Japanese. The probable reason why Keizo didn't pick Mauer as the MVP was that Ichiro Suzuki didn't win a batting title because of him.

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written by WB, November 23, 2009

maybe Konishi was making a cynical mockery of lazy Americans' acceptance of Cabrera being hung over for the final game of the season. I like the Ichiro hypothesis tho.

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written by Mark S, November 23, 2009

I don't think it was a cynical mockery of Americans, but rather an invitation to join his culture in the consumption of Sake - even before important business meetings or AL Central championship deciding games.

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the mangenius rules
written by jim alba, November 23, 2009

Perhaps there was a lapse in language usage/misunderstanding on the MVP award...perhaps Mr. Konishi thought MVP meant Most Vicious Puncher for Mr. Cabrera's domestic violence episode during the playoffs. Or perhaps it was misconstrued as Most Viscous Polluter [since his blood alcohol level that night topped out at a shade under 151 rum]. In either case who was he thinking Mr. Cabrera was a "most valuable player" for, since Miguel's actions speak to the fact that he is not a team-first player.

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konishi-who?
written by satz, November 23, 2009

Another example of someone who absolutely should NOT have a say in matters such as this. What a dope. Maybe he should get shipped off with all those old coots who refuse to put Blyleven in the HOF.

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for your "who is he" question
written by ship, November 24, 2009

he's a japanese sports writer for the kyodo news agency. they distribute to over 50 million subscribers across multiple news companies throughout japan, and america. the reason you can't google him easily is because you didn't bother to try doing it in japanese (hint japanese name, works for japanese company, yeah you get the picture). you'd have had better results finding his rather substantial column work if you had done some actual research

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written by yankeefan, November 24, 2009

I am Japanese, but I have to say that Japanese critics often make phony selections based on their personal preference. Keizo Konishi has been covering Ichiro since Ichiro was still 21 years old and was playing for Orix Bluewave in Japan. I read some of his books on Ichiro. His book consists of full of praises for Ichiro and full of severe criticisms on Hideki Matsui. Konishi is a very very close friend of Ichiro and esteems Ichiro like God. My guess is that Konishi was personally so shocked when his beloved star finished second behind Mauer in the BA that he gave his 1st MVP ballot to Cabrera. In Japan, some journalists and players establish so intimate personal relationship that this kind of things happen quite often. Ichiro is married to a sportscaster on TBS japanese channel. Ichiro received one MVP vote last year despite OPS.746, and now I am pretty confident to say that it is Konishi's vote.

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written by Tyler B, November 24, 2009

all good points, but why Miguel Cabrera?!

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