Red Sox - Angels Series

I'm going to try to keep this from being a rant against the Angels, but it could turn into that, so consider yourself warned.

Angels ace John Lackey said after the series that the Angels were the better team and that the Red Sox won the series on a series of flukes. Well John, you're wrong and I just lost a lot of respect for you. You were outpitched by Jon Lester not once, but twice. If not for some poor management in the 8th by the Red Sox, you would have been hung with two losses in the series.

The Red Sox were crippled coming in with two of their best hitters hurting, and the best active postseason pitcher a little on the injured side. But despite that, and the fact that many of their stars did not even play well, they still won. They won because they performed in high pressure situations, they pitched better, they excecuted better on the basepaths, and they played much better defense. The funny thing about this is that the Angels are praised for always doing these things.

I don't want to hear anymore about how the Angels play the game the right way and how great Garret Anderson, GMJ, Howie Kendrick, and Erick Aybar are. The Angels coninually blew plays in the field, and made bonehead moves on the bases. The biggest example of course being the squeeze play they blew their would be rally in the 8th inning. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!!! I understand that Willits is a great baserunner, all the more reason that he would have scored on a single, sac fly, or grounder. Aybar is not a very good hitter, but he doesn't strikout very much and might have been able to drive in a run by putting it in play. Even if he didn't they would still have Figgins with a chance to drive in the run with a single. Here's the other thing: they tried to bunt against a wild pitcher who was throwing nothing by mid 90s gas. Its hard to bunt such a pitch well, you bring the double play into play, and you completely negate a chance at a walk that could lead to more than a 1 run rally. In short, it was a bad move, but Aybar should not have been hitting anyway. The only reason this series was even close was the outstanding play of Mike Napoli and Mark Teixeira. They combined for 7 of the teams 13 runs, drove in 5, and hit two homers, without them, this surely would have been a sweep.

The Red Sox however, were not without questioning. In the 8th inning Angels rally, the Angels had their 4 best hitters come to the plate with the Sox leading 2-0. The Sox only had to keep the Angels from scoring twice in two innings. When Okajima walked Teixeira with two outs, the Red Sox should have brought in Papelbon to get Guerrero out. Stop the rally before it starts and worry about the 9th when you get there. Yes, Papelbon had throw 32 pitches the day before, but he insists he was ready, always wants the ball, and has electric stuff that would blow Guerrero and or Hunter away. Get him in when you need him most, crush the rally, and deal with the 9th when you get there. Who knows? Maybe the Sox would score a bunch in the 9th and blow it open. The point is that you get through the best hitters on the team and use a lesser reliever to get through the bottom of the order in the 9th. But thats not how we do things in today's game. It makes no sense, but Francona never would have been second guessed for not bringing Paps in. He would however have been torn apart if he went with Paps in the 8th, and they lost in the 9th.

The Sox advanced, but another series like that, and they will be stuck at home for the fall classic.

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.

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.

Colletti Strikes Again!

I bet Ned Colletti was really into baseball cards as a kid and was only interested in collecting the cards with the largest face value. So when I made that trade of Fred McGriff for Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter rookie cards back in '95, he'd have been the kid to jump at the deal. Well not much has changed since he became GM of the Dodgers, and he did it again today.

Colletti's collection of former Red Sox and aging superstars grew again today as he added future HOF outfielder Manny Ramirez to the mix. Shit, I'm surprised he didn't go out and get Jr. Giffey too, but I guess the White Sox beat him to it.

I guess the first question is why? The Dodgers needed a bat, but not a corner outfielder who only bats righthanded, is on the decline, is a horrible fielder and has been known to create distractions. With their duo of horrible contracts in centerfield and two solid young players at the corners, the Dodgers already had too many outfielders. Now they have one more, and in order for this trade to help at all, they must sit Pierre and Jones and play either Eithier or Kemp in center, neither of which will help their defense.

I wish the talking heads would please stop acting like the Dodgers just pulled a coup on the Sawx. As much as they may want him to be, this is not your older brother's Manny. He has been on the decline for two years now since having a career resurgence in 2006. He is leaving one of the best hitters parks in baseball for the much tougher Chavez Ravine, and he has been known to take plays off. Plus, do you really think he's going to get anything to hit with the game on the line? Not with Loney, Kemp, and Martin being the only 3 above average hitters currently in the lineup.

As for the Sawx, they got rid of 3 things they didn't want and got a very good, underrated player who may match the production of Ramirez for the rest of the year. Bay is a clear upgrade from the 1 dimensional Ramirez in the field, on the base paths, and in the clubhouse. He has had some monster years with Pittsburgh, has yet to turn 30, and is under contract through 2009 for less than the Red Sox paid the Dodgers to take Manny.

The Pirates did not net any uber prospects, but got 3 guys who could turn into solid major leaguers - pretty good for a year and a half of Bay.

Look: if this was the same Manny Ramirez of 4 or 5 years ago, this would be a crazy deal for Theo, but its not. This is dumping an old, over the hill cancer from a well oiled machine who has won 2 of the last 4 world series, and has to still be considered one of the favorites to do it again this year. It's true Ramirez was a big part of those world series teams, but he's also a big reason why it's just two and not 3 or 4. Boston can handle an drop off in production from leftfield thanks to stellar years from Drew and Youkilis, and the return of Papi. The addition by subtraction should invigorate the most talented team in the big leagues and may just be enough to put them over the top - again.

As for the White Sox, they have an even bigger problem. They already have one of the worst defensive outfields I have ever seen and they added the aging Kid for no reason other than they wanted to make a headline to remind people that Chicago has two teams. First of all, Griffey isn't even a good hitter in the NL anymore, nor is he a good outfielder. What's going to happen in the AL?

He can't man a corner position with Dye and Quentin taking care of those, he can't DH with Thome entrenched there, so that leaves center and first. There's no way he's going to play first because Griffey don't play no stinkin first, so that leaves center. He hasn't played center since 2006, and hasn't been good at it for much longer than that. Despite the fact that Kenny Williams seems to think center is easier on your body than left and right, it's not and Griffey is a huge injury risk. This bumps Konerko, and his bloated salary from the lineup, at least against right handed pitching which is a good thing on paper, but might not turn out so well in reality. Who knows how Konerko, the team leader for years, will react to being a bench player, plus I highly doubt KGJ will be much of an upgrade offensively. This poses just one question: why would you do that?

Ned Colletti Never Ceases to Amaze

Ned Colletti is probably the worst GM in all of sports unless you still count Isiah Thomas. He has signed numerous horrible contracts and made many head scratching moves over the years, but he had always held on to his young players (even though he wouldn't let them play) until now. Today Colletti traded two solid prospects for journeyman Casey Blake. Blake is 34, in the last year of his contract, and a notoriously poor fielder. This would be one thing if he hit like Ryan Braun or Chipper Jones, but his OPS is only .830. Now, being an Indians fan I have liked Casey Blake, he has been a very pleasant surprise since Shapiro picked him off the scrap heap in 2003, but Shapiro just sold at the absolute high point. Blake may still re-sign with Cleveland. He is a fan favorite and seems to like it there so that makes this deal all the better for the Indians.

The Indians got pitcher John Meloan, and catcher Carlos Santana (no, not that Carlos Santana). Meloan was absolutely nasty as closer in AA last year, and was good in AAA. This year, the Dodgers attempted to convert him into a starter seeing his hits and walks skyrocket. He is still striking out batters and not giving up homers, so it looks like he might just be better suited to relief. He will probably get a shot to close in Cleveland next year, a position where they could use
some help.

Santana would be a great addition even if he had no baseball skills because hey, his name is Carlos Santana! But he may turn out to be the best part of the deal. He was converted to catcher last year from outfield/3b and struggled throughout the 2007 season. This year has been a different story as he has just torn it up posting a stellar .318/.424/.563 line at long A ball. This could give the Indians a logjam at catcher, which of course is never a bad thing.

Back to the Dodgers end of things, the age old question applies: WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!?! The Dodgers defensively, at least for the short term, will consist of (Dr.) Jeff Kent, Nomar, and Blake. This is an infield only a fly ball pitcher could love. Lowe and Kuroda of course are not.

The lineup has not improved much, the defense has gotten much worse, and the farm system is weaker. This will not be the trade that puts them over the top. This one may have, but they turned that down. Good job Ned.