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.

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.

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.

Rob Dibble Uses Statistics

Today I was listening to Dibble and Kennedy on XM 175. Why? Because I'm an idiot.

Anyway, they were discussing why pitchers don't go as deep into games as they did in the past. Dibble is convinced it is because we are babying our young pitchers too much. He goes on to cite specific examples, most of which don't make any sense. But he peaks when he goes on to say:

"I think that starters going fewer innings is why earned run averages are so high. I's acceptable for a guy to have an ERA in the 4s now. It didn't use to be."

Wha??? Does Dibble really think that having less tired pitchers is the reason for more runs?

The call in guest tries to refute this point saying that the two are unrelated, but Dibble stops he right there.

"We use statistics to back things up on this show..." He goes on to pull up starters innings, complete games, games started, whatever and compares them to league average ERAs.

Dibble obviously never took statistics in school (assuming he actually went to school something that is debatable) and thus never learned that correlation does not equal causation. This is something that a lot of people don't understand. Take Al Gore for instance: he is sure that just because the world's temperature has increased slightly over the past 20-30 years, it must be because of the increase in CO2 emissions! It couldn't be due to the scientific fact that the sun has been giving off more energy during the same period of time, or due to the geological cycles that planets all go through. No, it must be the .05% increase in greenhouse gasses. Anyway, I digress.

Dibble completely ignores the following: they lowered the mound 5 inches in 1968, the top of strikezone has moved from the shoulders to the letters to the belt since then, the DH was added in the AL, new ballparks were built everywhere and almost all were smaller than the ballpark they replaced, and finally steroids entered the game.

The biggest reason for less innings being thrown by starters in the increased number of pitches per inning. Due to the smaller strikezone, more pitches are called balls which forces pitchers to throw more pitches. The onset of Sabermetrics has led to more and more players working the count waiting for their pitch which means even when pitchers throw a pitch in the strikezone, it is more likely to be a good pitch to hit which has led to more hits allowed per inning. Finally, players don't just make contact anymore. Most players go to the plate and swing as hard as they can everytime, trying to hit the ball out of the park. This inevitably leads to more strikeouts, reaching to unheared of levels. And Rob, statistics do back this up:

In 1964, Ron Santo led the NL in walks with 86. Norm Siebern led the AL with 106.
In 2007, Barry Bonds led the NL with 132. David Ortiz led the AL with 111. There has no been a league leader in walks with less than 100 in a non strike year since 1986. Frank Thomas walked 109 times in the 112 game strikeout year.

In 1964, Dick Allen (NL) and Nelson Matthews (AL) (hitters) led their leagues in strikeouts with 138 and 143 respectively.
In 2008, Mark Reynolds, Ryan Howard, and Jack Cust are all over 190 and theres still a week to play!

In 1964, Bob Veale and Al Downing (pitchers) led the NL and AL with 250 and 217 strikeouts respectively.
In 2007, despite each pitching almost 50 fewer innings, Jake Peavy and Scott Kazmir recorded 240 and 239 Ks respectively.

Sandy Koufax and Sam McDowell were the first pitchers to average more that 10 K/9 doing it in 1960 and 1966 respectively. It was done 12 times prior to 1990 6 times by Nolan Ryan, and 3 times by Koufax. Since 1990, it has been done 42 times.

The two most durable pitchers of this ERA are probably Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens. The players Dibble mentioned as durable were Bert Blyleven, Bob Gibson, and Nolan Ryan among others. Roy Halladay will be used as the "today" example. Since pitch counts are unavailable for all games, we will look at innings, batters faced, strikouts, and walks. We will also look at their 162 game averages rather than specific seasons which could serve as outliers.

Halladay: IP - 229, BF - 947, BB - 53, SO - 163
Johnson: IP - 232, BF - 958, BB - 84, SO - 275
Clemens: IP - 236, BF - 971, BB - 75, SO- 224
Blyleven: IP - 245, BF - 1011, BB - 65, SO - 182
Gibson: IP - 261, BF - 1081, BB - 89, SO - 209
Ryan: IP - 232, BF - 971, BB - 120, SO - 245

Ryan appears to be a freak and Halladay seems to be a pussy, but the rest are right in line. Look how many more strikeouts Johnson has compared to the other guys in pretty close to the same number of BF. I'd wager Johnson and Clemens threw about the same # of pitches per year as guys like Gibson and Blyleven. They just didn't go as many innings.

Dibble further discredited himself when he said this: "Those pitchers were still the best pitchers on their teams in the 9th inning after 100+ pitches. Even if they were at 80%, they were still better than the relievers, and I think it's the same today. I think Johan Santana at 80% is still the best option the Mets have."

He is given a chance to back out of that... You mean better than Heilman?

"No, I think Johan Santana at 80% is better that Wagner."

Wha???

Does he think that Mike Mussina and Andy Pettitte are better than Mariano Rivera?

Career ERAs: Santana - 3.14, Wagner 2.40
Whatever Robby.

Rob is also the guy who said OPS was made up by ESPN and that you really can't judge Jim Rice by the numbers.

Closer: The Best Job In Sports

Oh to be a closer. You have all the glory, all the money, and all the fame of an everyday player or a starting pitcher and a small percent of the responsibilities. You get to record the last out of a win (and usually of the world series). You get a salary of 7 to 8 figures. Fan love you. Writers love you. Announcers love you. And the best part is: you get to spend almost all your time hanging out in the bullpen.

A good closer will pitch between 60 and 80 innings per year. That is about 1/3 of what a starter will throw, and about 1/20 of the time an everyday player will play the field. Yet they are paid almost the same amount per season.

Lets apply this to a typical American's life. We'll ignore position players and compare apples to apples. Johan is one of the company's top salesmen. He works 40 hours a week, brings in many potential clients, and is paid a nice salary. Joe gets almost all the clients after Johan brings them in. He generally closes the deal, but the client is almost always ready to buy by the time they get to Joe. Joe works 12 hours a week and is paid almost as much as Johan. The boss values them equally. After a few years Johan begins to draw interest from other companies and rather than giving him the raise he has earned, his boss lets him go to a company in a different industry. Joe immediately gets a huge raise making him the companies highest paid employee. Joe continues to do the same job, but without Johan bringing in the clients, Joe is having a hard time closing as many deals.

It's gotten ridiculous. Team now draft and groom pitchers specifically to be closers. But you can't because closers are sort of like running backs in the NFL. There are a select few who are good every year, but there are many more who are good for a year or two and then flame out and disappear.

Guess who led the AL in saves last year? Not Rivera. Not Nathan. Not Papelbon. Not K-Rod, Street, or Jenks. Not even JJ Putz. Nope, Joe Freakin Borowski led the league in saves.

I heard some talking head recently say that they believed Mariano Rivera was the most important player during the Yankee's dynasty from 1996-2001. Um... No. It was not Rivera. It wasn't Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, or even Bernie Williams. It wasn't anyone in particular. It was their starting pitchers: Wells, Cone, Clemens, Pettitte, and El Duque. Those five pitchers carried that team from April-September and especially in October. The hitting helped, and Rivera was nice to have, but what happened when those pitchers got old? The team stopped winning in the playoffs. They tried to replace them with a long line of guys who didn't work out. Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez, Jeff Weaver, Jose Contreras, Mike Mussina, Jon Lieber, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, Randy Johnson, Chin Ming Wang, and second go-rounds with Pettitte and Clemens. Except for Wang, every one of those pitchers has had success elsewhere, but they were all either past their primes or not able to handle the pressure of winning in New York. The closest they came to winning was in 2003 when they were beaten by the better pitching of Josh Beckett and the Marlins.

A recent article on MLB.com discussed the move of Joba Chamberlain to the starting rotation and how team sometimes keep their best pitchers as relievers. The only reason to ever keep a pitcher in relief who could potentially be a front line starter is if a team already has plenty of starters, a situation which rarely occurs. Such was the case with Rivera in 1997. Coming off a stellar 1996 campaign in which he threw over 100 innings in relief he seemed destined to be a starter, but when John Wetteland left via free agency, the Yanks concluded that they had plenty of starting pitching an needed a reliever. With Wells, Cone, and Pettitte leading the way, I'd tend to agree with them that Rivera would not have been much more than a marginal improvement in their rotation. The rest is history. The same scenario occurred in Boston last year when the Red Sox kept Papelbon in the pen, and so far it's turned out quite well.

Don't get me wrong, relief pitchers are an important part of a team. But is the 9th inning guy that much more important than the guys who pitch the 8th inning, or the occasional 6th and 7th innings? And he certainly can't be considered as important as the guy who pitched 1-7, right?

The 4 best pitchers of the last 20 years are Clemens, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, and Randy Johnson, and its not even close. With the exception of Clemens, they're all first ballot HOF locks and Maddux should set the all time % of the vote record. To consider mentioning any closer, even Rivera, in the same sentence with these four is an absolute insult to them and what they accomplished. They were just as dominant if not more that the best closers, and they did it throwing 3 or 4 times as many innings. Pedro has a career WHIP of 1.04, Rivera's is 1.03 in 1/3 of the innings. Pedro's career best is 0.74, Mo's is 0.87 despite only having to dominate for a much shorter portion of time. Can you imagine what would have happened if Pedro had been a closer for his career? His lifetime ERA would have surely been under 1.50, and he may have had a few years with a 0.00 ERA. The Red Sox however would have struggled mightily without their ace and likely would have missed the playoffs every year from the time he arrived until 2004 when they finally had put together a well rounded pitching staff.

Rivera has had a stellar career, no doubt hall of fame caliber, but I wonder how good a starter he could have become. I can say that almost every ace starter could be a successful closer, but I cannot say the same about closers becoming starters. It's interesting to see guys like Dempster, Smoltz, and Lowe go from starter to closer and back again successfully. Dempster has arguably been the best pitcher on the Cubs this year, and one of the big reasons for their success. He has made an impact that he could not have made if he was still closing.

2005 AL All Manning Teams

Here we are the end of the season. There are still two weeks left, but it's time to name the end of the year all stars. The Rules: primary FIELD position only plus one DH for each league. The DH can be anyone, much like a utility player in fantasy. Each outfield must have at least one centerfielder, but right and left field can be played by anyone. Players must qualify for the batting title meaning they must have 502 plate appearances by the end of the season. For purposes of simplification, anyone on pace for 502 that is not done for the year, will be said to qualify.

All AL Team
C: Victor Martinez - Indians. Sorry Jason Varitek, but no one has been more important to his team's success since the all star break. Since the break, Victor has posted pecentages of .447, .577 and1.024. Varitek hasn't been bad with .366, .462, and .828, and he had a far better first half. But, Martinez's overall numbers are almost the same and his on-base is higher.

1B: Travis Hafner - Indians. Yes, he has served primarily as a DH, but the true first basemen don't excite me and Hafner's defense is certainly superior to DH counterparts David Ortiz and Jason Giambi who have about as much range as a spitball shooter. Hafner is 4th in the AL in OPS at .967 and 3rd in on-base at .405 his 26 bombs and 90 RBIs aren't bad either considering he missed two weeks with a concussion. Mark Texeira and his 42 homers may have seemed like a logical choice until you consider his road numbers: a very pedestrian .335, .435 and .770, numbers that would put him on par with Ronnie Belliard. Maybe Buhrle was onto somthing...

2B: Brian Roberts - Orioles. Talk about a weak position. In the first half, this guy was the MVP posting Pujolseque .416 .591 1.007 numbers. He has fallen off over 200 points on OPS, but he is still worlds better than the next best AL second sacker in on base and OPS. Soriano is not even close and .316 and .840 vs. Roberts .388 and .901.

3B: ARod - Yankees. As much as we all can't stand this guy or his team, this is a no-brainer. He is considerably better than the next best thirdbaseman in every major catetogory: R, H, HR, RBI, SB, OBP, SLG, OPS and he plays stellar defense. He is not the best player in baseball, but is probably the best in the AL.

SS: Michael Young - Rangers. Perhaps the most competitive postion in the AL includes JhonnyPeralta, Young, Miguel Tejada and perenial cantidate Derek Jeter. Jeter is perhaps the best fielder and has the intagibles, but doesn't have the numbers to match up with the other 3 at the plate. Young is the leader in OPS, but much like Texeira, he fast off away from Arlington. Tejada is widely considered the best hitting shortstop in baseball, but is only a .753 OPS since the break with just 6 homers. He just doesn't take enough walks for me. Peralta has been as hot as anyone, but like Young, he falls off a lot on the road. In the end it is Young with the best OBP and OPS who takes the spot.

CF: Grady Sizemore - Indians. A month ago, Johnny Damon had this spot sewn up, but injuries and a red hot September from Sizemore have pushed him to #2. Grady leads all AL centerfielders in OPS (.839), SLG (.490) and extra base hits (63) and he plays very good defense.

RF: Vlad Guerrero - Angels. No brainer #1 top AL outfielder in OBP, SLG and OPS plus perhaps the best outfield arm in the majors and very good speed. The prototypical 5 tool talent.

LF: Manny Ramirez - Red Sox. No brainer #1 right behind Vald in SLG and OPS. Always an adventure in the field, but even in a semi-off year, he is still too good a hitter to pass up.

DH: David Ortiz - Red Sox. Did you really think it would be anyone else? As great as Giambi has been all year, he can't top Big Papi in OPS. Don't get me wrong, Jason really deserves to be on this team. His .442 on base is #1 in the league, but with the power and clutch hitting the Big guy provides, he must make it.

SP: Johan Santana - Twins. It seems like all the good ones are in the NL this year but when you get into the numbers, Santana is the obvious choice once again. First in BA, OBP, SLG and OPS against as well as Ks and his is second in innings. Apologies to Zito, Colon and Burhle.

CL: Mariano Rivera - Yankees. There is no debate here. Once again, he is the one. He is essentially keeping the Yankees in the race. The game is over when he comes in. Only Huston street is in the same breath. And that's only if it is a very long breath.

Batting Order:
1. Sizemore
2. Young
3. ARod
4. Ortiz
5. Vlad
6. Hafner
7. Manny
8. Martinez
9. Roberts
Manager: Eric Wedge