Sorry to have slept on the baseball chat, but here's the deal:
1. Generally speaking, the Cy Young is the MVP award for pitchers. Position players aren't eligible for it, while pitchers are eligible for MVP, so it's uncommon for pitchers to win the Cy Young and MVP in the same year. I'm hard-pressed to remember a pitcher who won the MVP without also winning the Cy (because seriously, you're the MVP but we don't think you're even the best pitcher? SERIOUSLY?!?!?!)
2. A pitcher has to have such an extraordinary year to win the MVP that they probably really do deserve it.
3. MVP vs. Triple Crown.
Here's where stuff gets weird.
First of all, Cabrera's stats seem low for a Triple Crown to me. Check out this list:
Triple Crown Winners - MLB - CBSSports.com News, Rumors, Scores, Stats, Fantasy Advice
Cabrera's average was the third-lowest on the list. Seventh lowest for home runs. Sixth-lowest for RBIs. You look at that list and one number usually pops out immediately, whether it's average or homers or RBIs. Cabrera's numbers - and perhaps I'm jaded by the offensive / steroid era - seem positively average. For sake of illustration, in 2001, a monster player hit 37 HRs, knocked in 141 RBIs and batted .331. That offensive beast? Bret Boone. (We'll omit the discussion that should go along with that.) Cabrera's Triple Crown season was 44 HR, 139 RBIs and a .330 average. It seems ... historically unusual (and a welcome relief from the steroid era), but the key is that comparing him to previous Triple Crown winners - who were never suspected of being steroid users - still makes his numbers look low (and, again, a welcome relief from the steroid era).
4. Now, if you want to go into WAR and all that, here's Cabrera's Baseball-Reference page:
Miguel Cabrera Statistics and History - Baseball-Reference.com
And here's Trout's:
Mike Trout Statistics and History - Baseball-Reference.com
I don't care about that. Let's look at fielding, which is something pretty important: Trout's percentage was .988. Miggy's was .966. Trout made 4 errors. Miggy made 13. Cabrera was, judging by pretty much every stat, the better OFFENSIVE players. More RBIs, more productive outs, a greater number of moving runners over and scoring runners not just by RBI, etc. On the surface, Trout seems like the better defensive player, and a significant offensive contributor with a .326 average, 49 SBs and 129 runs. (Those last two led the league.) I can understand why there's an argument, and this page shows you why, at a glance, with all the numbers:
2012 American League Batting Leaders - Baseball-Reference.com
That's it, right there. That's all the reasons for the debate, laid out on one page. In a lot of categories, Trout and Cabrera trade off the 1 and 2 slot for league leaders.
Now, that page shouldn't be the only one you look at. You should look at the fielding leaders as well, which is here, and it's interesting.
2012 American League Fielding Leaders - Baseball-Reference.com
Cabrera showed up on the list of most errors at 3rd, but also shows up as a leader on a number of positive defensive categories. The astonishing part? Trout really only shows up on the fielding lists in newer stats like Total Zone Runs. The traditional stuff? Miggy has an edge there, and even on some of the sabremetric defensive stats.
To me, given a somewhat split offensive season, the focus must then be on defense, and it seems that the key argument for Trout is WAR (where he's first and Miggy is 4th), WAR for position players (where he's first and Miggy is 3rd), Offensive WAR (where he's first and Miggy is second), and Defensive WAR (where he's 7th and Miggy didn't rank). However, looking at the actual defensive stats, Miggy keeps showing up in the top 5 of traditional defensive stats (like Fielding % as 3B, where he ranked 3rd in the league), while Trout doesn't even show up on the fielding % list. Trout shows up on the OF Putouts list, Total Zone Runs as CF and Total Zone Runs as OF lists. That's it. Putouts are important, but the argument for Trout seems to focus almost wholly on sabremetric evaluations. I'm not saying that's wrong, but I am saying that the argument is leaving a lot out.
