One of the dullest rituals of the baseball season is nearly upon us – the annual debate over whether the Most Valuable Player trophy should be awarded to the best player in each league, or to those who contributed the most to their team’s push into playoffs as defined by some vague criteria.

This debate ignores the most important criterion named on the ballot sent out to MVP voters: “Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.”

Last year’s voting for the American League MVP saw this debate reach absurd depths as Shannon Stewart, a slightly above league-average left fielder, and David Ortiz, who became a full-time player only in the second half of the year, finished in third and fourth place in the balloting, taking a quarter of the first-place votes between them.

This happened because the obvious pick, Alex Rodriguez, played for a last-place team, and many voters sought any possible way to avoid the fact that Rodriguez was the best and most valuable player in the league, regardless of what his teammates did. In the context of the pennant race, they claimed, a merely decent left fielder was more valuable than a Gold Glove shortstop who was one of the two best hitters in the league.

If this doesn’t seem especially silly, try applying the same logic in attempting to separate the “worst” from the “least valuable” players in the game.

The very worst players in the game get their due – they are released, like the Giants’ Neifi Perez, or sent to the minors, like Kansas City’s Angel Berroa. It’s very rare, though, that the worst regulars on teams that aren’t as good as they should be, or teams stuck in pennant races with inferior teams – those players who would be considered, by the logic that guides many MVP debates, the least valuable players – get the blame they deserve.

This season, there are quite a few candidates for Least Valuable Player. The San Diego Padres, for instance, were counting on Jay Payton to provide solid defense and league average hitting this year. While his defense has been fine, his hitting has been execrable.

Payton’s .235 AVG/.298 OBA/.324 SLG batting line is so bad that the Padres have been forced to play Terrence Long, one of the game’s worse defensive outfielders, in center field. Payton should thusly get docked not only for his own bad play, but for the games Long’s glove has cost the team. The Padres are only 1 1 /2 games out of the wild card, and the difference between Payton’s poor play and what the Padres expected from him is the difference in the race. He’s a solid contender.

Payton might be trumped, though, by Philadelphia’s Marlon Byrd. Coming off his promising 2003 rookie season, Byrd looked like an All-Star in waiting. Instead, his disastrous season at the plate (.236/.297/.327) and misadventures in the field led the Phillies to give his at-bats to Doug Glanville, who has been even worse. The black hole in center field has been arguably the Phillies’ biggest weakness, diluting their offensive strength and exacerbating the woes of an already troubled and ineffective pitching staff.

Aside from these two, there are many other candidates. Oakland’s Bobby Kielty and Marco Scutaro, Toronto’s Eric Hinske, and Chicago’s Joe Crede all come to mind. But context drops them all a peg behind the best candidates.

Kielty has had a wretched season, but replacement Eric Byrnes has had a fine one; Scutaro has not been good, but he has only started because the two men ahead of him on the depth chart were injured. And while the terrible offense and statuesque defense of both Hinske and Crede has contributed to their team’s disappointing seasons, the Blue Jays have failed because of bad pitching and the White Sox have failed because of injuries to Frank Thomas and Magglio Ordonez.

Judging by the context-dependent criteria that lead to MVP votes for Shannon Stewart, we are led to Houston’s Brad Ausmus. No one has done more to keep his team out of the playoffs.

Coming into the season, the Astros looked like one of the best teams in the major leagues, and most of their key players have performed above expectations. What has ruined their playoff chances is their inability to get even average performance from several positions – shortstop, third base, and catcher.

No particular shortstop or third baseman can be blamed, as they’ve been benched and rotated in and out of the lineup. Ausmus, though, despite his .244/.299/.322 line, has been a mainstay throughout the season. No matter how many rallies he’s killed, no matter how many outs he’s made, he’s been in the lineup, harming his team at the plate and providing nowhere near enough defense to make up for it. If the Astros had a good hitter behind the plate, they’d quite possibly be right there with the Cubs, Giants, and Padres in the race for the wild card.

Ausmus, of course, hasn’t been nearly the worst player in the league, and doesn’t deserve to be thought of as such. It would be absurd to claim, based not on his performance but on his situation, that he was the worst – but that is exactly what people do when they claim that someone like Stewart is the MVP.

For better and for worse, ballplayers deserve to be judged based on their contributions, not those of their teammates – something to keep in mind when the sportswriters start in on their semantics.