Late Innings

The regular season is in the can, and a month from now the big awards will be handed out by the BWAA. We gave our predictions back in March. Revisiting those selections, we’ll compare them to who we think deserves the awards now.

NL Most Valuable Player

According to BP and PECOTA, the St. Louis Cardinals weren’t expected to be anything better than a 79 win team for 2008. However they surprised many and won 86 games. Granted due to the fact that they played in the competitive NL Central, they missed out on the playoffs. A big reason they played as well as they did was because of the season that Albert Pujols had.

I know that there will be an inclination by the BWAA to pick either Carlos Delgado or Ryan Howard. After all both players had massive home run and RBI totals. However in looking at a viable candidate for MVP, I’m going to use a good-old new age statistic: WARP, or “wins above replacement player.” Now what’s a replacement player you ask? Let me introduce Garrett Atkins:

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2008 Replacement Player (in the Players’ Union of course.) (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Atkins had a solid year, .286, 21, 99, however thanks to a .780 OPS he was nothing more than an average player. In other words, Atkins has a WARP of 0.0. This statistic attempts to find how many wins a player would be worth to his team more than Atkins. Howard and Delgado are worth about two wins more a piece. Pujols is close to eight. The same goes with the Astros and Lance Berkman. My preseason pick MVP of David Wright (six) or Carlos Beltran (seven) would be considerably better alternatives than Delgado, and the same goes with Pat Burrell and Chase Utley instead of Howard.

I’ve been seeing so many stories which are supporting Howard, especially in the Baltimore Sun. I wanted to chime on this earlier, FJM beat me to it. Yes, Howard hits home runs, we get it. He’ll also have a 15MM payday in 2009. In the end however, you can’t ignore the season that Pujols had. At the beginning of the year, everyone expected his numbers to be down, with the anticipation that he might have surgery. He stayed healthy and was dominant. His triple-crown numbers speak for themselves: .357, 37, 116. Without him, the Cardinals would have been lost this season. Pujols is the clear pick for 2008 NL MVP.
Preseason Pick: Wright

AL Most Valuable Player

Like Pujols above, Carlos Quinten was having the kind of season where giving him the MVP was a no-brainer, that is until he got hurt in September. Now the scramble is on to find the clear-choice MVP canidate. For me I like Joe Mauer, though it’s an equal toss-up between Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia and Mauer’s teammate Justin Morneau (recipient of the 2006 MVP award.) Mauer was the AL batting champion, and brought his Twins within one game of making the playoffs. I know I picked Alex Rodriguez, and since he cannot hit in the clutch, he has no shot of winning this award.
Preseason Pick: Rodriguez

NL Cy Young

I know there are some obvious choices in the pool. Brandon Webb and his 22 wins are tough to overlook. Edison Volquez won 17 games, and Chad Billingsley also won 16, both striking out over 200 hitters. The same goes with Tim Lincecum, who compiled an incredible 18-5, 2.62 record, striking out 265 hitters in 227 innings. Not to overlook Lincecum’s performance, but I’m sticking with my preseason pick Johan Santana.

Santana won 16 games this year. He also struck out over 200 hitters, and led the majors with a 2.53 ERA. Had it not been for his spotty bullpen, he would have easily won the 22 games that Webb did. Santana deserves the NL Cy Young trophy. He did everything in his power to push the Mets into the playoffs. Even though that didn’t happen, the miraculous three-hit shutout he threw on the Saturday at the end of the season against the Marlins and Ricky Nolasco sealed the deal for me.
Preseason Pick: Santana

AL Cy Young

All Winter, I’ve been hyping Justin Verlander as a 20 game winner, ready to take the next step. Like everyone, I expected the Tigers to finish at the top of their division, not in the NL Central cellar. Any ways with Verlander finishing 2008 with a disappointing 11-17 record, I was forced to look elsewhere for finding a Cy Young pitcher. Thankfully the choice wasn’t too difficult.

Last year the majors had one 20 game winner: Josh Beckett. The American League featured three 20 game winners this year alone: Mike Mussina, Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee. Mussina was solid, Halladay was much better, but Lee is the clear winner. No offense to the fine season that Ervin Santana had, Lee was equally as good as Santana was, going 22-3 with a 2.54 ERA. He started the All Star Game for the AL, and six starts into the season his ERA was 0.67. I can’t recall a season of late where a pitcher has been so dominant.
Preseason Pick: Verlander

NL Rookie of the Year

I picked Joey Votto as a toss up to win the ROY in the NL, picking him over teammate Jay Bruce. I later picked Cubs’ catcher Geovany Soto for my one fantasy team before the season started. In the end, all three rookies slugged 20 homers. However Soto had a fantastic season (.285, 23, 86), and I’m giving the award to him. Votto had better all-around numbers (.297, 24, 84) though and might be given the award in November.
Preseason Pick: Votto

AL Rookie of the Year

Back in April, I made the bold claim that Alex Gordon will be better in the end than Evan Longoria of the Rays. I could be right in the long run, I could be wrong. However in the end, Longoria had one hell of a rookie campaign: .272, 27, 85.

I did predict that Longoria will win the award, that that was with the other talented rookies in the league, including Joba Chamberlain, Clay Buchholz and Jacoby Ellsbury. Ellsbury stole 50 bases and had a good year. Chamberlain was very good until getting hurt, and Buchholz completely flopped. There were other good rookies in the end in the AL, such as the Royals’ Mike Aviles and Alexi Ramirez of the White Sox, but Longoria deserves the award. Many people expected him to be called up in May, so that the Rays could have an extra year of service time of him. He was brought up in early April. He was then given a long term deal, and it looks like he’ll be worth each penny of it in the long run.
Preseason Pick: Longoria

Managers of the Year

The MoTY Award is odd, and is something that many people don’t understand. As this clever post from BtBS states, the award usually goes to the managers who surprise throughout the season. Any ways for kicks, let’s give the award to Joe Madden of Tampa Bay, and Joe Torre of the Dodgers. It in the end doesn’t really matter who wins this award does it?

Executives of the Year

Again I’m not really sure how these are given out. How about we select Andrew Friedman of the Tampa Bay Rays, and Ned Colletti of the Los Angeles Dodgers? I know that Colletti isn’t very popular, but he’s done his job. And Jones wasn’t his fault.

Bad Hitters

With everything good, there are usually a few things that are bad. In regards to hitting, few could have been worse than Richie Sexson this year for the Mariners. He was paid 15.5MM in his walk year, and he hit a typical .221, 12, 36. The Yankees ultimately picked him up and let him go back in August. He’ll best be remembered for charging the mound against Kason Gabbard and the Rangers this year.

The Dodgers signed Andruw Jones to a two year deal this past winter averaging 18MM a year. His first year into the contract found him hitting an abysmal .158, 3, 14. Many people (me included) projected him to have a solid year, at least in the power department. He’ll need to turn it around in 2009, otherwise this one will look bad for Scott Boras.

Bad Pitchers

Just as there are bad hitters in baseball, there were also two horrible pitchers. In the AL, I’m hapily giving the award to Carlos Silva of the Mariners. Nicknamed “Mr. Hittable", Silva started his four year, 48MM deal off well in April (3-0, 2.79), then fell apart the rest of the way (1-15, 7.85 May on.) Ouch.

Finding someone equally as bad in the National League was tougher, but I’m giving this award to Livan Hernandez this year. He started off well with the Twins, going 6-2 through May. From June on he fell apart, and was eventually grabbed by the Rockies. He ate innings, 180 of them to be exact, and went a respectable 13-11. The 6.05 ERA was bad, the 1.67 WHIP was worse and the 257 hits he allowed is completely unacceptable. He earned 5MM plus some incentives this season, all bankrolled by the Minnesota Twins.