NY CY and other awards

Congratulations baseball writers, you have sunk to a new low. Edinson Volquez somehow managed to finish fourth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting despite NOT being a rookie!!! How hard is it to look something like that up before voting?!?!?! Rookies are defined as players who have accumulated fewer than 130 plate appearences, 50 innings pitched, or 45 days on an MLB roster. If you have passed any of those thresholds, you are not a rookie. In 3 previous MLB seasons, Volquez's IP are as follows: 12.2, 33.1, 34. Would you like a calculator? The three guys who voted for Volquez have been identified as: Jeremy Cothran of the Newark Star-Ledger, John Klima of the Los Angeles Daily News, and Jay Paris of the North County Times in San Diego. None of these guys should ever again be permitted to vote for anything. This includes but is not limited to: Hall of Fame, MVP, Cy Young, ROY, Manager of the Year, Gold Gloves, the All Star team, President of the United States, US Senators, US Representative, an ESPN Poll asking if Utah should be in a BCS game, and American Idol. They should probably just be fired.

As if that wasn't enough, the voters saw fit to place Brandon Webb and Brad Lidge 2nd and 4th in the NL Cy Young award. It was clear to at least 27 of the 32 voters that the two best pitchers in the NL BY FAR were Tim Lincecum and Johan Santana. I myself would have voted for Santana who had an absolutely terrific season leading NL pitchers in ERA, Innings, and VORP and dominating down the stretch to keep an otherwise crumbling Mets team in the race until the last hour of the season. His complete game on the second to last day of the season on three days rest was the stuff legends are made of. All that being said, Lincecum was not a bad choice as he was dominant for a piss poor Giants team with almost no offense.

Then you have people like Mike Wilbon spouting off on TV that Lincecum would have been 5th on his CY ballot. That is idiotic. Mike Wilbon has probably never seen Lincecum throw and assumes he can't be as good as the guys who grabbed the big headlines. Lincecum struckout 265 guys! Thats not something that happens every year, and the list of guys with more Ks than that in a season in the past 50 years reads like a section of the Hall of Fame: Randy Johnson, Schilling, Pedro, Smoltz, Ryan, Koufax, Carlton, Seaver, Gibson, Clemens to name a few.

Webb and Lidge had very good years, but not near the lever of Santana and Timmy. Webb's 22 wins are nice, but he faltered down the stretch and his other numbers are not close to the two studs. Lidge had good stats, but threw less than an inning per appearence and only threw 69 innings total. How can you put him behind Sabathia who pitched almost twice the innings, pitched better in terms of WHIP and ERA, and was under the most pressure of anyone even Santana down the stretch. He was basically a one man pitching staff that got the Brew Crew to the playoffs. If you count his AL stats, he's right there with Santana, Lincecum, Lee, and Halladay for the best pitcher in all of baseball for 2008. Hamels with no votes would have been a solid 3rd choice if you want to exclude Sabathia for his lack of NL innings.

It will be interesting to see how badly they botch the MVPs.

Legit contenders for the AL MVP consist of Youkilis, Pedroia, Mauer, Lee, Sizemore, Halladay, and ARod.

Legit contenders for the NL MVP consist of Albert Pujols.

Others who should get votes in the NL consist of Ramirez, Santana, Berkman, Jones, Utley, Lidge, Ramirez, Sabathia, Lincecum, and Ludwick. Ryan Howard should officially get 0 votes for MVP because he was not the most valuable: Player on his team, player on his side of the infield on his team, player in his division, 1st baseman in his division, large lefthanded black man in his league, or king of strikeouts in his league.

Breaking down the postseason matchups: NL

Brewers (90-72) vs. Phillies (90-72)

This is a match up that I believe hinges on what the Brewer pitchers other than CC can do. All kidding aside, CC will go in games 2 and 5 (the 2nd on 3 days rest, the 5th on 4). That means the Brewers must win at least one of the other 3 games. The starters will be some combo of Sheets, Bush, Suppan (who has been solid in the playoffs), Parra, and Gallardo. I'd bet on Suppan and Bush for sure and we'll see on Sheets/Gallardo for game 4.

Starting pitching:

Brewers: Sabathia and some combo of those listed above.
Phillies: Hamels, Moyer, Meyers, Blanton.
Advantage: Brewers especially if they can get anything out of Sheets. Sabathia is better than Hamels, and Meyers and Blanton are nothing to write home about. Gallardo could also be this year's Jon Lester, Anthony Reyes, or Jaret Wright.

Lineup:

The Brewers offense lives and dies with the homer. They can put a 10 spot up one night and get shutout the next. Except for Fielder, Durham, and Branyan, they do not take walks, and except for those three, they are right hand dominant. This is all good news though as the Phillies don't had a wild starter, have two lefties, and play in a park that favors the long ball.

The Phillies have six solid players led by Chase Utley and the streaky Ryan Howard. Most of the Phillies can take a walk, but they will be facing a Brewer staff that does not allow many. The Phillies are prone to the strikeout, and Howard can be neutralized by left handed pitcher.

Advantage: I'm going to call this a PUSH, but only because of the match ups. The Phillies will send lefties in 3 of the 5 games and their two righties aren't great.

Bullpen

Milwaukee: The only real weakness for the Brew Crew. If this were 2004 when Gagne, and Mota could still get their steroids, and when Riske was still good, it might be a different story, but it's not. They might want to consider Gallardo or Sheets to close because it's going to be scary with Torres out there if he has to face the meat of that Phillie lineup. Gagne and Mota have both been solid down the stretch, so maybe they'll be ok. Then again, CC will probably win or lose the game by himself, so they might not need the bullpen in every game.

Phillies: The bridge to Lidge has been solid led by Madsen and Durbin, but they have both shouldered heavy loads with 1 200 inning starter. Lidge has been lights out all year, but he was also lights out back in 2005 when Pujols hit one that hasn't landed yet... Just saying.

Advantage: Phillies.

Bench/Defense/Management/Intangibles
The Brewers have much better bench than the Phils, but they also have nutoriously bad defenders other than Hardy and Kendall. The Phillies are solid defensively with Utley and especially Feliz, but average to poor just about everywhere else. The management is tough to call because Sveum has about the same managing experience as I do, and Manual has never impressed me. I gotta go with the Crew on intagibles with Sabathia the leading reason but also Fielder who has been money down the stretch and in clutch situations.

Advantage: Brewers

Prediction: Brewers in 5. CC will win his second game of the series in a dual with Hamels. The Brewers will find a way to win agaisnt either Meyers or Blanton for their other win.


Dodgers (84-68) vs. Cubs (97-64)

Starting pitching:

The Dodgers will send Lowe, Billingsley, Kuroda, and either Maddux or Kershaw, probably Maddux.

The Cubs will counter with Dempster, Harden, Zambrano, and Lilly.

The Cubs certainly have the edge in talent and probably success in 2008, but they also have more question marks with health. Lowe has been a big game pitcher in the past, Maddux has been their before and Billingsley is their best pitcher.

Advantage: Dodgers. There are just too many question marks for the Cubs. Scouts say that Harden wasn't even hitting 90 MPH in his last throwing session, Zambrano has been about as consistent as the Diamondbacks were this year, and Dempster just threw more innings than he has in six years.

Lineup:

The best thing going for the Dodgers is that Andruw Jones will get 0 ABs in the series. They also just got Furcal back who may prove to be their saving grace. Oh, and they have some guy with dreads who can flat out rake.. Now if I could just remember his name.

The Cubs are solid 1-8, but don't have that one big slugger like the Dodgers have. They are also right hand dominant with all of their stars coming from that side (another reason to send Maddux).

Advantage: Cubs, but not by as much as it would have been just a little while ago.

Bullpen:

The Dodgers bullpen has been recently stabilized by the return of closer Takashi Saito. They have also gotten solid years out of Broxton, Beimel, Wade, Park, and Kuo.

The Cubs bullpen has been hailed as the greatest all year led by Wood, Marmol, and the recently added Samardjiza. The problem is that they have ridden Marmol for almost 90 innings, Wood is not lights out, and other than those 3, they're kind of shaky.

Advantage: Dodgers. Depth and power in that pen. The game is pretty much over after 7 innings.

Bench/Defense/Management/Intangibles:
A slight edge to the Cubs on the bench with Fontenot/Johnson, but the Dodgerss are much improved after getting everybody and their mother back from injury in the last few weeks. Neither team is good defensively but the Cubs do not have the cut off man playing leftfield, so that's a plus. Torre certainly has had more playoff success than Lou including beating Lou's 116 win monster back in 2001, but I like Lou's fire so that's close. The Dodgers definately have the intangibles working for them with Red Sox playoff heros Lowe and that other guy and his 100 million reasons to succeed, as well as the experience of Maddux and the rapping of Juan Pierre (maybe he can go to wrigley field and get that wiggley feel again!!). As for the Cubs. Well, they have that 100 year thing going for them, but come on, they're the Cubs!

Advantage: Push

Prediction: Dodgers in 5. I'm really surprised here as I thought the Cubs would clean up. But the Dodgers are peaking at the right time and have far fewer questions in the rotation. If Harden and Zambrano can pitch like they did in the middle of the summer, then its a different story, but I just don't see that happening. The Dodgers starters really only need to give them 6 good innings which I think they are more than capable of doing. I can't say the same about the Cubs. Zambrano has been kicked around since his no hitter (which in retrospect may have been a bad thing since he had to throw so many pitches) and Harden can't control his pitches enough to last past the 5th much of the time. The Cubs match up much better with the Phillies, Brewers, or Mets, but I think they drew the one team that can beat them. And boy will is be a sad day when they do. I wonder who they'll blame it on this time.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Wrigley for the mighty Cubs have bowed out.

Brewers announce playoff rotation

The Brewers have come out with their playoff rotation for 2008:

Game 1. CC Sabathia
Game 2. CC Sabathia
Game 3. CC Sabathia
Game 4. CC Sabathia (if necessary)

Brewers GM Doug Melvin also added that if the Phillies somehow beat Sabathia twice to force a game 5, Sabathia has volunteered to pitch right handed in an effort to confuse Phillie hitters.

There is also talk of renaming the franchise the Sabathias.

Aces in the Hole: CC Sabathia and Johan Santana

With the season winding down, their teams pitching staffs in disarray, and needing to win, the Mets and Brewers turned to the two best pitchers in baseball to take the ball on short rest and they both delivered.

First Santana, coming off the highest pitch count of his career, took the hill on 3 days rest for the first time as a starter and shutout a solid Marlins lineup, allowing 6 runners and striking out 9. One timezone away, the Brewers Ben Sheets could not respond as he suffered through 2.1 terrible innings before being relieved. Since throwing a shutout against the Padres 3 weeks ago, Sheets has been injured and ineffective. Who knows if he'll even pitch in the playoffs, but if he does, he'll have to regain his form from earlier in the season if the Brewers want to last long.

The next day however was a different story. For on this day, the Brewers had the only man on the planet who could out do Santana: CC Sabathia. Sabathia, pitching on three days rest for the third time in a row, pitched even better than Santana had the previous day allowing just one unearned run on 5 baserunners, only one of whom got past second base. Less than an hour later the Mets failed to beat the Marlins to force a playoff, they celebrated in Milwaukee for the first time in 26 years.

This brings me to my point. The one thing I don't like about the wild card is that teams do not have equal schedules. Why should the final playoff spot have been decided by what the Mets did against the Marlins or what the Brewers did against the depleted Cubs? Baseball should have stepped in and changed the schedule forcing the Brewers to play the Mets for the final spot. A playoff when tied would not be the same as both teams were going to move mountains to try and win yesterday depleting themselves to a point that the playoff would have been won by the team that could still stand after the dust settled.

No, we could have had a Sunday of Johan vs. Sabathia for all the marbles. That would have been one for the ages. Too bad it never happend. Maybe we can get something close in the NLDS with CC vs. Hamels in game 5, but thats asking a lot.

Did Cleveland Throw in the Towel too Early?

Heading into 2008, the Indians were coming off a season where they won 96 games and took a 3-1 in the ALCS 1 game from going to the World Series when their two Cy Young candidates unraveled and they bowed to Boston in 7. They were strong favorites to repeat in the central (apart from the few delusional people who overlooked the Tiger's massive holes), and many saw them as a World Series contender once again. And why not? They seemed to have all the pieces to the puzzle. Well injuries and a bad bullpen quickly dashed the illusions of grandeur that this team held on opening day, and on July 7th, they effectively gave up when they dealt free agent to be Cy Young winner CC Sabathia to the Brewers. On the day of the trade, they sat at 37-51, in last place in the AL Central and 14 games behind the division leading White Sox. Casey Blake and Paul Byrd, two productive players for the Tribe the past few years would soon follow CC to greener pastures.

Well, here we are 10 weeks later and the Indians sit at 75-77 in 3rd place in the division, 9.5 games behind the Sox. Was Sabathia dead weight? Hardly. All he has done since the trade is absolutely dominate the NL to the tune of 9-1 with a 1.82 ERA, a 1.03 WHIP, 6 CGs and 3 shutouts in 14 starts. Put his NL stats together with his AL stats and he has been the second best pitcher in the big leagues coincidentally behind the Indians Cliff Lee.

So let me get this straight: The Indians dealt the second best pitcher in all of baseball as well as two of their regulars, and they are 4.5 games closer to first, and 12 games closer to .500? Yep.

The Tribe has gone on an absolute tear since the trade going 38-26 one of the best records in the league during that stretch. Great second halves by Lee, Jhonny Peralta, Shin-Soo Choo, Asdrubal Cabrera, Kelly Shoppach, and continued success by the best player in the AL this year, Grady Sizemore, has led the improbable run. Shoppach and Choo have been particularly impressive, OPSing over 1.000 since the break versus in the mid .700 prior. Cabrera has also rebounded in a big way with a nice line of .308 /.389/.462 up from his dreadful first half of .184/.282/.247. The team has also gotten a boost from the returns of Fausto Carmona, Victor Martinez, and Travis Hafner though neither the return time nor the boost has been as good as expected.

What if the Tribe had held on to Sabathia, Blake and Byrd? While its unlikely that everything would have fallen into place as well as it has, lets just say that it did. Lets remove the 13 disastrous starts from Zach Jackson, Matt Ginter, and Bryan Bullington as well as two from Jeremy Sowers and replace them with CC's 14 NL starts. This is clearly not apples to apples, but bear with me.

Tribe's record in these 14 starts: 4-10. ERA in these starts: 6.67. Let's say that Sabathia would likely have won any game where 4 runs or more were scored and half of the games with 2 or 3 runs. This bumps the record to: 10-4 in those games and improves the teams record to 81-71 which would put them 1 game behind the Twins and 3.5 behind the Sox for the division. Factor in that one of the extra Sabathia wins would likely have come against the Sox puts them tied with the Twinkies at 2.5 game. Just one extra win from Byrd puts them just 1.5 back with two Cy Young candidates, just about the whole team in tow, and playing their best baseball of the year. All of this seems well within the realm of possibility.

That final series in Chicago next week would start to look pretty damn exciting especially since Lee and Sabathia would be starting the first two games, and Carlos Quentin is out.

Then again who could possibly have seen this coming. Even with Sabathia it might not have happened, and LaPorta could turn into the next great Cleveland hitter and make everyone forget about Sabathia. All the same, it would be nice to still be in the playoff picture.

Why don't we just rename the MVP the PWBAASOACT

Lets drop the MVP award. Seriously. The Cy Young goes to the best pitcher, and while it's often debated who the best pitcher is, the meaning of the award itself is not questioned. The MVP should be the same way. It should go to the best player in each league. This will almost always be the position player who has the best season. In rare cases, a pitcher may be so dominant or there may not be a clear cut best position player. In those cases, like with Cliff Lee in 2008, Pedro Martinez in 2000, and Greg Maddux in 1995, it would be ok to award the distinction to a pitcher.

All this makes sense to me, and it seems pretty clear cut. I don't why writers get so hung up on the valuable part. Why would there be an award for being the best player on a contending team, or as it seems, especially in the national league this season, the player with the best august and September on a contending team (PWBAASOACT). How else do you explain the suggested candidates: CC Sabathia, Manny Ramirez, Ryan Howard, and Carlos Delgado? Every single one of those guys either sucked or did not play in the league during the first half. It's a 6 month season and it should go to the player who had a 6 month season. The ridiculous arguments for each:

Sabathia:
Has been the most dominating pitcher in the league since his arrival, and his arrival has coincided with the Brewers rise in the standings.

First of all, Sabathia has been terrific, but Tim Lincecum has been just as good in the second half and he has pitch and pitched well the whole year. Also, you can't tell me that CC has added more wins to the Brewers than Ben Sheets or Ryan Braun both of whom have been good and at times great since the season started.

Ramirez:
He has been the CC Sabathia of hitters since his arrival, and it has coincided with the Dodgers rise despite me criticizing the trade.

Like Sabathia, Ramirez has been almost equaled by Albert Pujols, a man who has also been that good since day 1. Eithier and Billingsley are bigger reasons why the Dodgers are where they are. Also as Gammons has found, Ramirez sparked the Dodgers to play better more than invigorating their offense, "In Ramirez's first 40 games, the Dodgers had a run differential of plus-22 and averaged 4.55 runs per game, as opposed to 4.43 through July 31....It's hard to talk about the MVP Award for Manny when the team that paid the Dodgers to take Ramirez is 27-13 without him through Sunday and have seen their runs per game increase from 4.94 at the time of the deal to 6.22 since." Could not have said it better myself.

Delgado:
Delgado took a 3rd place team that was going nowhere and made them into a contender not simply by the numbers. He lifted many of his teammates play, leading by example.

Whatever that means. He had a good but not great second half: .289/.374/598 with lots of homers and lots of RBIs, too bad his first half of .248/.328/.455 counts! Getting that kind of production from a 1st baseman is a big reason why the Mets were a 3rd place team to begin with. Wright, Beltran, Reyes and Santana were all more important to the Mets this season.

Howard:
Perhaps the worse case out of all of them, Howard's is similar to Delgado without quite as bad a first half or quite as good a second half. They have almost identical YTD lines of .263/.345/.508 for Delgado vs. .249/.335/.537 for Howard. The difference is Howard leads in the all important (not important) counting stats of home runs and RBIs. He is also about to be the first man to strikeout 200 times in a season.

I could spend all day discussing why counting stats (particularly RBIs and saves) as bad indicators of performance, but I'll skip it for now and go to more relevant arguments. Howard plays in one of the best hitters parks in all of baseball and it shows, he has OPSed 72 points higher at home than on the road. He has also done almost all of his damage against right handers OPSing 232 points higher against them than against lefties. Finally, like the others, there are better candidates on his own team: Burrell, Utley, Hamels, and even Werth. All of whom carried the Phils to a great first half while Howard was trying to start his own personal hurricane with the avalanche of whiffs he put up. Pujols is vastly superior to Howard in every way. If he were playing on the Phillies in Citizens Bank, he'd have more homers, more RBIs and better stats than the amazing ones he currently has. And he may be spending October golfing this year, but he still has won more world series rings than Howard has won playoff games and it remains to be seen if that will change anytime soon.