Baseball Awards and Such

I meant to say something about them before they started announcing awards, or at least the big ones, but oh, well.

Johan Santana was an obvious choice for the AL Cy Young, and none of the voters did anything stupid like give someone else their first place vote. He won the pitching triple crown (although only by a tie in wins), and there was really no argument for anyone having a better season. The NL Cy Young, on the other hand, nobody deserved. Sure, the NL had some good pitchers, but none of them pitched well enough to earn the award. Since the award apparently couldn't go to the humidor in Colorado (which was more deserving than any pitcher), I suppose Brandon Webb was an acceptable selection, given the competition. Perhaps there shuold be an asterisk next to the designation of him as winner ...

I'm enormously glad that Joe Girardi beat out Willie Randolph for the NL Manager of the Year Award. The Mets have been throwing money around for years, and finally had something to show for it. Big deal. They essentially did what they were supposed to do. Girardi took a bunch of fairly raw talent, and surprised almost everyone. Plus, he told off the owner -- bonus points. Now, I certainly agree that talk of the Marlins losing 127 games (what I saw someone say) was beyond absurd, but prior to the season I saw only one writer who said that it was conceivable that they'd compete for the wild card, and yet they ended up in the hunt. Jim Leyland seemed like a good pick for the AL version of the award.

I don't really see how there can be much argument over Verlander for AL Rookie of the Year, despite the efforts to create an argument over who it should be. Liriano pitched better when he actually pitched, but his season was too abbreviated to give him the award when Verlander pitched the whole season. Someone gave a first-place vote to Nick Markakis, which was interesting, and he put up good enough numbers to win it some years, but not this one. Papelbon, at the end of the day, failed to receive a single first-place vote, and rightfully so -- there was the injury (abbreviated season), and the fact that he was a closer, not a starter. Starters are much more valuable than closers; I'm quite sick of all the attention closers receive. Incidently, I'm back to my "no closers deserve to be in the Hall of Fame" mode of thinking. The NL ROY award had a much more wide-open race. They had more quality rookie starters (even though you can certainly argue the top three were in the AL -- Liriano, Verlander, and Weaver), and more quality rookie position players. The Marlins had six players receive votes, and the Dodgers had three, while all other teams combined for three more. I don't really have an argument against Hanley Ramirez winning the award, except that he stunk up the joint whenever I stuck him in my fantasy lineup. I wasn't too opinionated on this, except I believe that Ryan Zimmerman finished too high at a very close seond. Perhaps some voters didn't want to name two Marlins 1-2 on their ballot. This is one of those races where I'd like to see a more complete ballot breakdown (who named whom at what position on their ballot).

It seems a bit odd to go ahead with the MVP awards, as they're going to announce the NL one later today, and the AL one tomorrow, and I've already waited this long to do an awards write-up, but, come on, that's not the way I operate. I think Jeter will come away with the AL MVP award. I know that there are a lot of Jeter haters out there, and, well, too bad. I know a lot of people complain that his stats aren't MVP-type stats (HR and RBI, mostly), but look at Ichiro's 2001 numbers when he won MVP. The NL MVP award I believe will go to Pujols. I say this even though I have an irrational dislike of Pujols, much like the irrational dislike many people have of Jeter (although the magnitude is less). When Ryan Howard had 56 homers on September 8 (a cumulative stat, of course), he looked like a lock for the award. However, hitting only two the rest of the way probably did him in. It didn't help that his team fell short in the wild card race, either. He'll still get a few first-place votes, I'm sure, but the award should go to Pujols.

There are several other awards out there, but I don't consider them to be very serious awards. Some are more serious than others, but I still consider the above to be more serious (with the possible exception of the managerial awards). I know some people want to complain about Jeter's Gold Glove, but it's far from the greatest outrage in GG history -- in 1999, Rafael Palmeiro won the AL 1B award despite only playing 28 games in the field all season.