Fangraphs just posted an article looking solely at offensive performance. Guess who's #1?
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index...text-included/
The Triple Crown is an absolutely awesome achievement. But it's an incomplete measure of offensive performance, let alone an incomplete measure of total value. It turns out that hitting in to a ton of double plays actually hurts your team. Equating Triple Crown with an automatic MVP is, in my opinion, just plain lazy.
Rare accomplishments are fun and deserve both praise and attention. But Miguel Cabrera doesn't automatically deserve an MVP because one combination of his stats has a label on it.
The last player to hit for the Triple Crown did it 45 years ago. It has been done 16 times, but many of us weren't alive the last time it happened.
The last player to hit .320 with 30 HR and 45 SB was nobody. Mike Trout is the first player in major league history to do that. Nobody has ever seen it happen until this year.