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.

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.

Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt, and the land of redemption

I have to admit, I never really liked Cliff Lee the pitcher before this year. Even when he pitched well in 2005, it always seemed like trouble was right around the corner, and that Lee was escaping big innings rather than pitching out of jams. In 2006, it was worse, and in 2007, it was so bad that a guy who had finished 4th in the Cy Young voting in 2005 was demoted to AAA for most of the year.

But something happened this offseason: instead of waiting to get beat and hoping to escape Lee began to attack hitters and force them to hit his pitch. He took what was pretty good stuff and decided to trust it, pounding the strike zone, getting ahead of hitters and forcing them to hit his almost unhittable breaking pitches. In 2004, Lee walked 81 batters in 179 innings, in 2005 it was 52 in 202 innings, last year it was 36 in 97.1 innings. This year however he has walked 28 in 210 innings. Lee will probably make 3 more starts this season so he will probably pitch beween 230 and 240 innings, and there is a very good chance to walk fewer batters this year than last year. Lee leads the majors in walks per 9 with an outstanding 1.2.

His strikeout numbers have not suffered as they are among the best of his career, he has not become more hittable as he is having his best year in H/9, and he has not given up the long ball as he is first in the majors in HR/9. Perhaps the best statistic at measuring a pitchers command is K/BB yet another statistic in which Lee leads the majors. In short he has been the man.

Lee came out of the gate absolutely on fire posting a 0.61 ERA in April, at the time I thought there was no chance of a whole season of this, and I was right, however he has not slowed down much. I watched a few of Lee's April starts and he looked like he was for real. The hitters were always behind in the count and chasing his breaking ball that none of them could hit. Lee also seemed to really bear down when he was in a jam and often escape unscathed. All Lee's numbers looked good, and the numbers that indicate future success: K/BB, BB/9, HR/9, WHIP, looked even better. I began to think that maybe his great start wasn't a fluke. As it turned out, I was right on the money.

As the season went on and Lee kept dominating, the team seemed different during his starts than they did for the other pitchers. When Lee is on the mound, they know they're going to win. They know that if they get him 4 or 5 runs, the game is over. The man has been an almost automatic 7+ innings with 3 or less runs. Even in his bad starts of which he's really only had 3, he gives his team at least 5 innings.


Over in the other league another one of my favorite pitchers has also enjoyed a great resurgence. Since coming into the league, Roy Oswalt has been almost automatic for 15 wins, 220 innings, and an ERA around 3.00 but in the first half of 2008, it looked like it might be coming to an end for the little guy from Mississippi. He got absolutely shelled in April and May, and despite having a pretty solid June, he entered the all star break with an ERA of 4.56 and was getting kicked around in July before an injury forced him to the DL.

Ever since he retured, he has been back to his old self, maybe better. Since the break, he's 8-1 with a 1.94 ERA, 2 shutouts, and 50 hits in 74 innings. August was one of the best months of his career and he has carried it into September a month where he has allowed 13 runners in 26 innings and no runs. He is a darkhorse candidate for the Cy Young now, a distinction that seemed impossible 3 months ago. The Cy Young talk is probably a bit of a stretch, but thanks to Ike, he will likely get at least 4 more starts, if he is great in all of them, he could be 19-9 with an ERA in the low 3s which will be much like his previous 5 top 5 Cy Young finishes.

I guess I shouldn't be that surprised that this nutorious second half stud has turned it up a notch, especially with his team back in the race. For his career, he is 65-19 with a 2.87 ERA and a .667 OPS against. And this is his best month for his career, he is 26-7 with a 2.48 ERA.

The really interesting thing is this: Houston is currently 3 back of Milwaukee for the wild card. They will probably get the whole weekend off due to Ike, and Roy-O will be back pitching Tuesday. The rest of the way they play Florida, Pittsburgh, Cincinatti, and Atlanta, teams that are a combined 56 games under .500. At least part of the series with the Cubs will likely be made up after the conclusion of the regular season at which point the Cubs will probably have clinched home field and have nothing to play for. So Houston may be playing a 4A or even a 3A team with the playoffs on the line.

Or how about this: a tie with the Brewers for the wild card, and a 1 game playoff with CC Sabathia against Roy Oswalt. I'll be skipping work for that.

Finally, with all this talk of Delgado for MVP because he "led the Mets resurgence" or some such garbage, why not a Roy-O for MVP case since he has been at the forefront of the Astros run? That's stupid, I know, but if that's your criteria for what makes a player valuable, you have to consider it.

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.

KRod MVP? Uhh... No

The media loves to talk about awards prematurely, and with the Cy Young and rookie of the year awards all but locked up in both leagues. MVP debate has started.

If you haven't figured it out, the Cy Youngs should be won by Brandon Webb and Cliff Lee respectively, and it likely won't be close although Lincecum and Halladay could make things interesting in either falters down the stretch.

Similarly the ROYs should be Geovany Soto and Evan Longoria and both should be unanimous.

This leaves managers of the year and MVP. The skippers should be Maddon in the AL, and Gonzalez in the NL although I'm sure Scioscia and Pinella will get votes, and Bruce Bouchy should as well.

Finally it brings me to MVP the award that is the single stupidest, most subjective, most arbitrarily awarded accolade in all of sports. Jeff Miller thinks and apparently Peter Gammons think that Francisco Rodriguez is the man for this award. Jeff Miller is also an idiot, and apparently so is Gammons although a lot of people have thought so for a very long time.

Against all odds the Angels, and their anemic offense have dominated baseball this year and are tied for baseball's best record despite having a run differential worse than the Toronto Blue Jays. Many will say Rodriguez has a lot to due with this. I'll point to the three best pitchers on the team: Ervin Santana, John Lackey, and Joe Saunders, to go along with a well rounded bullpen, a weak division, and old fashioned good luck. The notion that a closer who averages less than 3 innings per week can be the most valuable player is downright the kind of person who would run with the bulls brainless and even that is not strong enough to describe it. The argument for the case is based on two things that just piss me off: the notion that the MVP must come from the a playoff team, and the save statistic. KRod as they call him should be the first man to reach 60 saves this year. Good for him. Doesn't change the fact that the save is the single stupidest statistic in all of baseball as Jim Capel agrees.

It's true that it's Most Valuable Player, not best player which is stupid to begin with, but lets break that name down shall we? Most Valuable Player. Thankfully the sports writers are smart enough to understand the Most, and they have yet to award it to a fan or a manager so I'm going to assume that they understand the player as well. What they seem to have a problem with the is the valuable.

Webster defines valuable as:

1 a: having monetary value b: worth a good price
2 a: having desirable or esteemed characteristics or qualities <valuable friendships> b: of great use or service <valuable advice>
MVP awards in any sport have never been award to the guy who was highest paid or was the best bargain, although that could be a fun award, so we'll stick to definition number to. Most valuable advice, to me would mean the advice that helped me the most therefore MVP should be the player who helps his team the most. Basically who adds the most wins to his team's win/loss record. Nowhere does it say that this player must be on a team in contention. The fact that sports writers seem to think that a player needs to be on a winning team to be valuable, or that he can't be the best player on a team full of very good players is downright idiotic and has led to some terrible, god awful MVPs over the years.

Here are my thoughts on how MVP should be decided:
1. The position in the standings of players team should have no bearing on the award.
2. The players park, position, and other surrounding should be factored in.

In short the MVP should be awarded to the best player in the league for that particular season. In the NL, this is easy as it is once again Albert Pujols despite fantastic years from Lance Berkman, Hanley Ramirez, Matt Holliday, and Chipper Jones. Pujols crushes all with an incredible .356/.462/.630 line, almost twice as many walks as strikeouts, and incredible 75.2 VORP with a month to go, and good defense at first. His WARP3 is a very solid 12.9, a career high, meaning that he has added an estimated 13 wins to St. Louis' total which helps explain their unexpected success.

Things are less clear in the AL where surprisingly the two best players are on a team that is below .500. Cliff Lee and Grady Sizemore have been the two best players in the league all season. Lee leads the AL in most pitching categories and leads all pitchers in baseball as well as all players in the AL in VORP with 61.3, Sizemore is right behind at 58.3. Lee is an incredible 18-2 with 141 strikeouts and just 26 walks, he also has a WARP3 of 11.2 also best in the AL. Sizemore should be 30-30 with good defense in center, great baserunning, and being really the only threat for much of the season in a weak lineup. If he finishes with a flurry he could become the first center fielder to hit the 40-40 mark. Even without that, his WARP3 is 9.9 which leads AL hitters by half a win.

Cliff Lee is the AL MVP this season. Thanks to his stellar season, the Indians would be running away with the division if they hadn't lost Martinez, Hafner, Westbrook, and Carmona for most of the season, and might still be in the hunt if they had held on to Sabathia. None of these things are Lee's fault. Plain and simple: the Indians are 19-6 when Lee starts and 42-61 when anyone else starts. If that's not valuable I don't know what is.

If you have to pick a player on a contending team, that player has to be Carlos Quentin who is the best player on a team that could make the playoffs. But as I have said earlier, that's stupid.