With his considerable haul of hardware in his first two years in the bigs, few major league greats can touch former Sun Devil and current American League MVP Dustin Pedroia.

David Ortiz calls him caballito, Spanish for little pony.

Ozzie Guillen calls him a jockey.

Echo from the Buttes calls him the No. 1 Sun Devil in the Majors.

The Baseball Writers Association of America calls him MVP.

Boston Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia was named the American League Most Valuable Player on Tuesday, receiving 16 of 28 possible first-place votes. (Of course, we predicted this back in September.)

Pedroia is the first Sun Devil to win the award since Barry Bonds picked up the last of his seven in 2004. He’s also the first second baseman to win the MVP in the A.L. since Nellie Fox way back in 1959.

The MVP is yet another in an impressive haul of accolades for Pedroia. In two big league seasons, he’s won a World Series ring, Rookie of the Year, MVP, a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger, and he’s started at second base for the A.L. in the All-Star Game.

Wow.

It’s tough to find someone with quite that good of a run so early in their careers, but here’s a stab at some greats who’ve come close.

• Joe DiMaggio, who probably had the greatest start ever to a career, won the World Series in his first four seasons, finished second in the MVP race in his second season and definitely would have won Rookie of the Year if it existed in 1936, but, of course, it didn’t.
• Jackie Robinson won the first-ever Rookie of the Year in 1947, then won an MVP and made his first All-Star appearance in 1949. But he didn’t win a World Series until 1955.
• Derek Jeter won Rookie of the Year and a World Series in 1996, but didn’t make an All-Star team until 1998 and has never won an MVP.
• Albert Pujols, this year’s N.L. MVP, won Rookie of the Year and a Silver Slugger in 2001, finished second behind Bonds in the MVP in 2002, and made it to the NLCS that year (and has since won two MVPs, a World Series and a Gold Glove).
• Ryan Howard probably comes the closest to Pedroia’s haul. He won Rookie of the Year in 2005, and then in 2006 won an MVP and Silver Slugger, made an All-Star Game appearance and won the Home Run Derby. And then the Phillies won the World Series this past October. But he’ll start a big-league game at pitcher before he comes within a mile of a Gold Glove.

So, historically, it really is an impressive two-year run for Pedroia, and if we had the leverage of ESPN or somebody like that, we’d get the Elias Sports Bureau on it right away to try to find someone to match it.

In related news, Andre Ethier didn’t receive a single vote in the National League MVP race, not even a 10th place nod, while guys like Jose Valverde, Nate McLouth and Derrek Lee did.

Nobody ever said this stuff had to make sense.

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Tags: ASU Baseball , Andre Ethier, barry bonds, Dustin Pedroia // 2 Comments »