Do Idiots Grow on Trees?

XM 175 - all baseball all the time. Great, right? Wrong.

They have 24 hours of baseball to cover and unfortunately, there are not 24 hours worth of good radio hosts that have jobs.

The middle of the afternoons is usually covered by the two headed monster of Dibble and Kennedy, two guys so bad they make John Kruk look like Rob Neyer. Dibble was out for the day (thank god) and was replaced by Chuck Wilson. I thought this was a sure fire upgrade. I was wrong.

We're at the time of year when awards are on the agenda every day. My current feelings on the topic are as follows: AL MVP: Pedroia or Sizemore, NL MVP and this is an absolute no doubt about it: Albert Pujols, AL CY Cliff Lee and its not close, NL CY: Lincecum but it could change.

The AL MVP could decide itself is Pedroia continues his torrid second half. The AL Cy is a two horse race with Lee the clear favorite with 3 weeks to play. Wilson understands this, he just doesn't understand who the other horse is. "I think a lot of voters are going to look at Matsuzaka's record and vote for him," Wilson said. Whaaa???

Now I could see an argument made for Halladay who leads the league in WHIP, innings, and has 9 complete games. Some dumbass who doesn't understand stats will probably vote for a guy who is the 4th best closer in the AL this year, but will set a record in the single stupidest statistic there is. But, If someone were to vote for Dice-K it would defy all logic and force us to ask, "Why would you do that!?"

Lee has 4 more stars, 45 more innings, 4 less earned runs, less walks, less homers allowed, less hit batsman, less wild pitches, more strikeouts, more wins, a lower ERA, a lower WHIP, more complete games, more shutouts, more quality starts, a higher quality start percentage, a higher winning percentage, a higher team winning percentage in his starts, and plays for a team with a much worse offense. Where exactly is the Matsuzaka argument in all that? It doesn't exist.

They go on to address the V in MVP and say that unless a player is worlds better than everyone else, he should have to at least be in the race to be considered. I'll buy that as the pressure of a pennant race can wear on a guy, so Pedroia would be a great MVP choice. Where they blew their argument was when they listed the example of Andre Dawson with the last place Cubs in 1987. A season where he posted an incredible .328 OBP and 130 OPS+. Jack Clark who was a member of the team that won the pennant posted a ,459 OBP, a 176 OPS+, and a .597 slugging, all of which led the league. So citing a guy who was an inferior player on an inferior team really doesn't make any sense at all.

They finished it off by listing Carlos Delgado as an MVP candidate. That's just stupid and would again call for a why would you do that? He's about the 5th most valuable player on his own team, he is vastly inferior to Pujols in any metric you pick, and his team, despite having a lot more talent and a much higher payroll is only 3 games better than Albert's. I guess he's the MVP because he chose to play in the weaker NL East. There is no argument you can make that Delgado is more valuable than Pujols, or Berkman for that matter.