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.

Seriously what could possibly be gained here?

You're the San Francisco Giants. You have the best pitcher in baseball under the age of 25, and you've been out of contention since March. You save his arm right?

Wrong.

I have to give a big Why would you do that? shoutout to the Giants who sent NL Cy Young front runner the 24 year old Tim Lincecum out there for 138 pitches last night. I understand he was pitching a shutout and he's about the only guy the fans come to watch, but they were up 7-0 going into the 9th so the win was secure and they have nothing to gain in the standings at this point in the season.

Look, Lincecum at 24 is already one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball and he figures to be the centerpiece in the Giants rebuilding process despite the fact that they almost traded him to Toronto last offseason (imagine that rotation for a second). All the more reason to save his young arm for when your team might actually be in contention. Then again, they are so bad that it might not happen while Lincecum is still there.

The Giants don't seem to care. Tim has thrown over 100 pitches in 24 of his 30 starts including 5 over 120. Why don't they just call Dr. James Andrews and make TJ reservations?

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.