Awards and Thoughts On Voting

The most debated award in all of sports is probably the MVP in baseball. Everyone has their own definition of what an MVP should be, what stats are important, if "intangibles" can be considered, and what not.

Lets start with the basic thought that the MVP has to come from a winning team. This is ridiculous because a player's teammates have no effect on his value to the team. If anything, a good player on a bad team is actually more valuable than a good player on a good team because the player on the bad team has less help and is a much larger factor in whether or not his team wins. The only part of this argument that has any merit is the player dealing with the pressure of a pennant race. This would disqualify players on great teams as well as bad teams because great teams clinch in August or early September, so while the thought could be used as a tiebreaker, it should not be the end all be all of the MVP. When Vlad Guerrero played for Montreal, he never received a single 1st place vote for MVP, and he never finished higher than 4th. His first year with TLAAOA, he won in a landslide despite having a slight drop off from his Montreal production. That makes a lot of sense.

My basic criteria for MVP:
1. He must be the best player on his team. In some cases a team can have 2 best players that are virtually tied. In that case, it would be ok to vote for two of the players. What does not make sense is voting for two players from the same team when one was considerably better than the other. For example there is no way Jimmy Rollins should have won when Chase Utley was better, and Justin Morneau certainly should not have won in 2006.

2. It is not the award for best hitter. Therefore position, fielding, and baserunning must be considered. The spectrum is: C, SS, 2B, CF, 3B, RF, LF, 1B, DH. The farther you are to the left, the positions get tougher, it is more critical to be a good fielder, and there are fewer great players. There are a TON of good hitting LFs, 1Bs, and DHs, but not so many Cs, SSs and 2B.

3. A pitcher can win the MVP, but he had better have had by far the best year of anybody to compensate for not playing every day.

4. It is a 6 month season and every game counts the same so you must have played, and played well all year. You do not get bonus points for being bad for the first half and good in the second half even if your being good coincided with your team's rise in the standings.

My awards:
AL MVP
By far the most difficult of the awards to sort out because no one really had an outstanding year on offense. That makes my decision for me.

1. Cliff Lee - Indians
No one had a bigger impact on their team winning games than Lee. In a year of ups and downs for the Indians, Lee was the consistent driving force. The team went from 14 games out of first on July 11 to 6.5 games out today. The bottom line is that when Lee starts, the Indians are 24-7 including a loss when he threw 9 shutout innings, and when everyone else starts, they are 57-73.

2. Dustin Pedroia - Red Sox
When Papi was bad or hurt, and Manny whined his way out of town, Pedroia stepped up hitting everywhere in the lineup, playing stellar defense, running the bases well, and keeping the Red Sox afloat in baseball's toughest division.

3. Joe Mauer- Twins
Best hitting catcher, and best fielding catcher in baseball. The biggest reason the Twins are where they are.

NL MVP
This one is not close.

1. Albert Pujols - Cardinals
By far the best player in baseball this year. There is no acceptable reason not to vote him first. Albert is a great hitter, fielder, baserunner, clutch hitter, and he has done it all year. This has been his best year, and the best non-Bonds year in quite some time. The only excuse for not voting for Pujols is that the Cards did not make the playoffs. Fine. If that's your standard all 10 of your MVP votes had better come from playoff teams. Otherwise you are contradicting yourself.

2. Hanley Ramirez - Marlins
Absolutely terrific hitter and the driving force for the surprising Marlins all year. If the Marlins would get him out of the leadoff spot, he could be even more productive. Ken Rosenthal didn't even have Hanley in his top 10. That's just flat out inexcusable because if Ramirez played in New York or Philly, the debate would be Ramirez vs. Pujols and no one else would even be in the conversation.

3. Johan Santana - Mets
Forget Wright, Reyes, Delgado, Beltran, and everyone else. Santana is the Mets MVP and the difference between the 2008 Mets and the 2007 Mets. He has been great all year and lethal under the pressure of the pennant race. His 117 pitch shutout of the Marlins yesterday on 3 days rest to put the Mets back into a tie for the wild card was legendary.

AL Cy Young
1. Lee
Also not close. Halladay has had a great year, but he has a much better defense behind him and he still has not been able to top Cliff in ERA.

2. Roy Halladay - Jays
Just about any other year, he'd be a lock, but Cliff has just been better.

3. Jon Lester - Red Sox
Lester comes in with a very surprising, but very distant third. He has been the staff ace for the Sox this year when Beckett faltered. The Twins must be kicking themselves for not getting this guy for Johan.

NL Cy
The second most interesting race, which has just gotten even more exciting.

1. Johan Santana - Mets
Lincecum could still win this back today, but Johan's start yesterday vaulted him into the lead. He could easily be 22-5 or so with a better bullpen and a little more run support . He has the most innings, the lowest ERA, and has pitched in the most pressure packed situations of any NL pitcher.

2. Tim Lincecum - Giants
Timmy has had a great season for a horrible team. He has probably thrown too many pitches and too many innings, but we wont know for sure for a few years.

3. Cole Hamels - Phillies
Hamels has anchored a starting rotation that has been otherwise bad and inconsistent all year. He has been better than other guys who will get more votes like Brandon Webb and that is solely because his W-L record is not that impressive.

AL ROY
1. Evan Longoria - Rays
This isn't close. Don't try to make it be. No one else even deserves mention.

NL ROY
1. Geovany Soto - Cubs
See AL Roy.

AL Manager
1. Joe Maddon
See NL ROY

NL Manager
1. Freddi Gonzalez - Marlins
Contended for 25 weeks with a payroll less than AROD's salary.
2. Sweet Lou - Cubs
Yeah they were supposed to win, but they're the Cubs things go wrong all the time. Lou kept them steady and by far the best team in the NL all year. Lets see if he can do it in the playoffs.
3. Bruce Bouchy - Giants
The fact that this team didn't lost 3/4 of its games in incredible. On paper, their offense was about as threatening as a teddy bear. They had Lincecum and Cain and 3 days of rain, but not much else. Bouchy kept them out of cellar and that's impressive.

Special Futility Award
Mark Reynolds - Diamondbacks
Not only did Reynolds blow past Adam Dunn and Ryan Howard to become the first player to strikeout 200 times in a season, he also made a staggering 34 errors in the field which is by far the most in baseball. To Reynolds' credit, he's a promising young player, but if he has a few more seasons like this, he wont be around for long.

Why Would You Do That Awards:

To Josh Byrnes for trading Carlos Quentin to the White Sox.
Quentin would certainly have helped the godawful DBacks line up score some more runs and probably win the division. Quentin was traded so the team could keep Eric Byrnes in left. Byrnes who's contract was up at the end of last year was signed to an extension despite the fact that he really isn't very good. Byrnes was incredibly bad in 52 games before losing the rest of the season to injury.

To John McLaren and Jim Riggleman for giving Jose Vidro 330 plate appearances at DH and 1B while he hit a staggering .234 /.274/.338.

To Ned Colletti for signing Andruw Jones for 2 years 36 mil when he already had a full outfield. At least he only gave Jones a 2 year contract, because anymore and this might have gone down as the worst signing in history. Jones hit even worse than Vidro .158/.249/.256. I'm going to start calling the .500 OPS mark the Andruw line.

To anyone who thought the Tigers would score 1000 runs or that the Mariners would win the West. Assuming the Tigers score 9 runs in their last 2 games, they will miss 1000 by a mere 150 or about 1 run per game. Seattle meanwhile is 39 games out of 1st. Looking back, neither prediction made much sense. Even if all 9 hitters in the Tigers lineup replicated their respective career years, they would have had a hard time scoring 1000 runs. And to think that anyone other than Granderson and Cabrera would not regress with age is poor thinking. Seattle, while being much worse than even I expected, never looked like anything more than a .500 team. They have no big producers on offense, and they do not have a deep pitching staff.