Baseball awards (some announced; others coming soon)

I meant to post this before the first major awards were announced. Today, Philadelphia's Ryan Howard and Oakland's Huston Street were awarded the Rookie of the Year in the National and American Leagues, respectively. I agree with both of these selections, although Tadahito Iguchi, Robinson Cano, and Nick Swisher as well. I'll give an honorable plug for Jonny Gomes, who hit really well but wasn't up for the full season. Unlike the NL, though (see below), the AL had a lot of worthy contenders for top rookie. Anyway, Huston was both my pick and who I thought the writers would pick. In the NL, Howard only played in 88 games, but I would have chosen him regardless because there was really nobody else who deserved it. I thought the writers would pick Willy Tavares of the Astros because he played the full season, but he's got a bedeviling OPS of .666 and has really been an awful hitter all season. (His average looks reasonable, but OBP is really the right metric for getting on base, so at the end of the day is average is extremely misleading. He also has basically no power at all.) If he learns how to walk, he'll become a good player even without the power, but he needs to get on base far more than he currently does. By the way, Jeff Francoeur has a tremendous future, but he's also going to have to learn plate discipline.

For Cy Young, my NL pick is Roger Clemens, although Chris Carpenter will probably win. I have Carpenter second, Dontrelle Willis third, Andy Pettitte fourth, and Pedro Martinez fifth. Attention voters: It is in no way Clemens' fault that he got poor run support. The stats show definitively that he was the best pitcher in the NL this year! Carpenter barely edges out Willis for 2nd. Also, if you take a look at things like expected ERA, you'll notice that Pedro Martinez was exceptionally unlucky this year. Carpenter will likely win the award (because the voters like wins, which has a lot to do with how many runs your team score behind you) and Pedro will likely not even finish close to the top even though he should. By the way, I can see arguments for putting Pettitte as high as second, but Clemens deserves to win essentially any way one cuts this. Unfortunately, he'll probably end up coming in third.

For the AL Cy Young, it's probably going to be another situation in which the voters go with the guy with the most wins, so Bartolo Colon will likely get the award. However, this is another situation in which he clearly should not be the winner. The best American League starter this year (hands down!) has been Johan Santana. He didn't dominate the way he did in 2004, but still nobody was close to him. Also, one might note that his winning percentage is even very similar to Colon's, for those who insist on such things. (You shouldn't, because you should attempt to remove things that are due to what other people on the team did rather than what the pitcher himself actually did.) Now, one can also make a case for Yankee closer Mariano Rivera as the Cy Young award winner, but typically one doesn't pick a closer unless they have either a historic season (like Eric Gagne in 2003) or there isn't a worthy starter to pick. Here there is, so Santana is who I think should win the Cy Young.

For the NL MVP, it comes to Albert Pujols verus Derrek Lee. I would pick Lee, but these two guys are really close and I wouldn't have a problem with either of them winning. A lot of people are bringing up Andruw Jones, but that is such a joke. I wouldn't be surprised if the writers pick him, but I really hope they're smarter than that. He did have a great season, but the players who I think ought to finish ahead of Jones (who, e.g., is only 12th in the league in OPS with .922 compared to Pujol's 1.039 and Lee's 1.080 !) in the MVP voting include Lee, Pujols, Jason Bay (who is a tremendous player; why do most fans have no clue who he is? I know, it's because he's a Pirate), Miguel Cabrera, and possibly one or two others (like David Wright, who is also a tremendous player who is virtually unknown, and he even plays for the Mets).

For AL MVP, my choice is A-Rod, who I think will win. David Ortiz had an awesome year, but Alex Rodriguez's stats are a little bit better and he plays in the field. Players who deserve high spots on the ballot include (in no particular order) Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield, Travis Hafner, Vladimir Guerrero (aka, Vlad the Impaler), Mark Teixeira, Michael Young, and Paul Konerko. (By the way, Travis Hafner is another awesome player who is not well-known, and "guerrero" means 'warrior' in Spanish, so this is a great last name for a hitter of that caliber.) Brian Roberts deserves some props as well (actually, he probably deserves to finish ahead of Young, Konerko, and Sheffield), although he unsurprisingly tailed-off big time in the second half. (He was over his head in the first half.)

For Manager of the Year, Bobby Cox deserves the award in the NL (and will probably win it) and Ned Yost deserves serious consideration as well. Ozzie Guillen will probably win this award in the AL, but I'm not convinced he should win. I'm tempted to say Eric Wedge should win, but I'm not really sure. The Gold Gloves were announced last week and have been quite a farce for many years. There were some deserving winners, but the people who think Derek Jeter should get a gold glove need to stop smoking crack. (There were some other really poor choices, although none of them were like the one from a few years ago in which Rafael Palmeiro won a Gold Glove for his 30 or so games at first base even when he spent most of the year DHing. What the Hell?) The Comeback Player of the Year awards had a new format this year---they were sponsored by Viagre (which is amusing), the candidates in each league were set by midseason (so that Tony Clark, who should have won this award, got screwed by not being on the NL list), and the winners were actually announced a few days or so before the regular season was even over. That's a load of crap. Jason Giambi was the clear winner of the AL comeback award in my mind, but I bet he's on some sort of steroids again and people just don't know how to detect what he's using yet. (Not to be cynical or anything... but this is my blog, and I don't need any proof to say what I think. :) Anyway, I just wanted to mention that this is completely my cynical speculation.)

The opinions of the ESPN writers on who should win all these awards can be found here.

A whole bunch of stats can be found here.