MVPs on Bad Teams

It is pretty easy to tell how a pitcher who pitches on a bad team is affected. Generally speaking it means less wins, as his team will score fewer runs, and more wins blown by the bullpen. It can also mean a higher earned run average, or more unearned runs allowed because bad teams often have a terrible defense as well. But not many people think about how playing on a terrible team alters the statistics of a truly great hitter. I think how these players are treated has changed in the last decade. Previously, I think one great hitter on a bad team had their stats inflated. Now I haven't done in detailed analysis on this theory yet, this is purely from observation of games in the 80's and 90's. I will do research on retrosheet to back it up though, and I think it will prove true, but I hypothesize that players on bad teams had their stats inflated because pitchers then didn't want to put guys on base and waste pitches. So instead of pitching around the good hitter in the lineup, they just pitched to him knowing they had a lead and that he couldn't really hurt them. You get a whole lot of meaningless fastballs down the middle of the plate, I.e. the Jack Morris school of pitching. However, lately, with pitchers not going deep into ballgames, and the intentional walk a much bigger part of the game, pitchers are approaching it differently. Why pitch to a guy who can hit a homerun when you can just walk him and get the next guy out? The difference in mind set is the difference in the pitching mentality then and now. When I get a chance, I will pick out some players and pour through the box scores and see how exactly they were treated with runners on base in the games there teams were behind by a large margin. I think I will be proven correct.