POSTED BY Coley Ward ON 1:30 am, January 6, 2010 - POSTED IN News reel
This is interesting: MLB.com’s Matthew Leach reports, “If (Matt Holliday) finishes in the top-10 in MVP balloting in 2016, a $17 million option vests for 2017.”
You know what it takes to finish in the top 10 in the MVP voting? This year, it would have taken a total of 49 points. That’s about four first-place votes. Or 2 fourth place votes, 1 fifth place vote, 2 sixth place votes, 3 seventh place votes, 1 eighth place vote, 1 ninth place vote and 2 tenth place votes (that’s what 1oth place finisher Matt Kemp got).
If Holliday has a decent season in 2016 and the Cardinals even sniff the playoffs, he’ll get some MVP love. Maybe he won’t get any first or second place votes. But he could get a handful of sixth and seventh place votes. And that could be enough to put him within spitting distance of the top 10.
If just one first place vote could be the difference between Holliday’s option vesting or not, what’s to stop an enterprising sports writer from approaching Holliday and offering his vote in exchange for some of that cash?
It wouldn’t be a matter of compromising one’s journalistic integrity, as MVP voting has nothing to do with journalism.
It would be a matter of sacrificing personal integrity.
How much money would Holliday have to pay you for your (theoretical) vote?
Paul Moro 
Madraider 
I’d ask for $1 million. I bet that’s a lower percentage of $17 million than what Boras takes.