You don’t have to have some set of hard and fast rules about how you feel about awards if you don’t want to. Feel free to go with your gut each year. Feel free to just vote for your favorite player all you want. Or not. I don’t care. And if you think Miguel Cabrera is the MVP this year I won’t quibble at all. Wonderful choice and I won’t squawk a bit if he wins the award.

But if you claim to have rules for such things, don’t change them every couple of years and claim you’re consistent.

Here’s Jon Paul Morosi a few minutes ago:

I believe players are most valuable to their teams when they help those teams win division titles and make the playoffs. — Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) September 16, 2013

Jon Paul Morosi in 2010:

In 2010, of course, the Tigers finished 81-81 and were out of the playoff picture while Hamilton’s Rangers won the AL West with a huge assist from Josh Hamilton. I guess that whole thing about “helping their teams win division titles and make the playoffs” criteria for the MVP award only matters when it helps Miguel Cabrera and doesn’t matter when it hurts him.

For what it’s worth, here was Morosi’s full rationale for Cabrera over Hamilton in 2010. It can be boiled down to “the Tigers would be AWFUL if it wasn’t for their one awesome player. The Rangers, on the other hand, have lots of awesome players, so Hamilton is not necessarily as important.”

In other words: the exact opposite of what his argument for Cabrera would be this year, should he go with Cabrera. Which, given his “playoffs are essential” criteria seems about right.