All of the major baseball awards were handed out in the last two weeks and the old-boy's club did well with the winners (although further down the list there were some bad selections) and that is certainly progress at least for this year.
The winners read as this:
Rookies: Evan Longoria, Geovany Soto
Cy Young: Tim Lincecum, Cliff Lee
MVP: Albert Pujols, Dustin Pedroia
All of these are reasonable choices. I liked Santana over Lincecum by a hair in the NL Cy Young, and had Pedroia a (close) 5th on my Internet Baseball Awards ballot, but they were both good.
Now for the bad. Ryan Howard is barely a major league first baseman against left handed hitting, he can't field, or run, and he finished second because the BBWAA likes RBI's and people on winning teams. Meanwhile the best hitting, and fielding second baseman on the planet plays next to him and finished 14th.
K-Rod, who is a closer, and never pitched in more than one inning at a time, and pitched in about 4% of his teams innings, and only got all those saves because he got so many opportunities...ok end of rant. That guy got a FIRST place vote and finshed sixth in the AL in MVP, AHEAD OF CLIFF LEE WHO WON THE CY YOUNG. And Lincecum finshed 5th among NL pitchers in the MVP voting after winning the Cy Young, behind C.C. Sabathia, who only played in the NL for like 3 weeks (exaggeration.)
This is something I wrote on another website about Delgado finishing ninth in the NL ahead of Beltran and Jose Reyes.
Jose Reyes- OPS+ 118, good not great SS defense.
David Wright- OPS+ 141, best 3B glove in the NL
Carlos Beltran- OPS+ 129, Best OF glove in the game
Carlos Delgado- OPS+127, poor 1B glove
One of these things is not like the other. I won’t even go into baserunning, where Beltran really excels, but basically what I’m saying is that you should have a problem with Delgado getting the votes he did not Beltran. I could make a heck of an argument that Beltran was their most valuable hitter/fielder.
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