2023: Awards and Honours

I posted a couple of polls earlier, N.L. MVP and Cy Young; this is more of a general thread.

Silver Slugger nominations: https://www.mlb.com/news/silver-slugger-award-finalists-2023

I don't think there's a better, truer summary of the Blue Jays this year than that list. One nomination: Whit Merrifield, utility.

2023 N.L. MVP

2023 N.L. Cy Young

No slight to Ben Zobrist or Tony Phillips, but I think we can safely say that Markus Lynn Betts is the greatest utility player ever (better than Rose, yes).

Gold Glove winners:

https://www.mlb.com/news/2023-gold-glove-award-winners

Jays won three.

(I think you have to hold off with Immaculate Grid for at least a few days.)

They're doing the "finalists" now for the big awards. I still think it's a weird idea, but I guess they've got to do something to build some attention in the days leading up to the actual results.

AL Cy Young: Cole, Gausman, Gray. Alphabetical, and I'm sure the order they'll finish, too. Gray was two wins ahead of Gausman in bWAR, but I don't think we're quite deep enough into the analytical takeover that an 8-8 record will get him second place. (If I'm wrong, then we are.)

Cole's unanimous win will bolster his already solid HOF résumé.

The never-not-thrilling Manager of the Year (NL): Counsell, Schumaker, Snitker.

Jackie Robinson ROY (AL): Tanner Bibee, Triston Casas, Gunnar Henderson. First guy--I'm past embarrassment about these things--I don't know. Second guy--how could I not?--I do. Henderson finished third among AL position players in bWAR, so I assume he'll win handily.

But Bradish should be subbed in for one of Gausman and Gray, come on.

I'd be fine with that. I know closer are very passé when it comes to awards now, but I'd even be okay with Bautista in the top three.

"closers"

MOY (AL): Bochy, Cash, Hyde. Regular-season only, so I'm sure Hyde wins easily.

xp clemenza I honestly laughed at your Casas comment, I love you!

I’m honestly shocked by that top 3 though. I’m really pleased for Bibee, because he’s been really good - like blew my Mariners rookie pitcher faves Miller & Woo completely off the map- and especially he got limited innings and got injured towards the end of the year.

Gunnar was the preseason fave & will win. But I’m honestly shocked that Josh Jung wasn’t a top 3? He missed like six weeks (?) with a broken finger but I watched him carve up the AL West before that happened, and the Rangers went into a huge backward slide when that happened. Had they done Bibee-Henderson-Jung I would have been like, yeah, I see that. It’s been a great rookie class.

I don’t think Casas will win, but this top 3 finish is a huge testament to how he turned his year around (.857 OPS, coooook), so let me leave you with two of his best moments of the year:

The Barry Bonds hr in Oracle Park:

Casas: Holy Fuck pic.twitter.com/Z9xyJVpVkc

— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) July 29, 2023

TRISTON CASAS TO THE MOON! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/4MLtmLwCLU

— Red Sox (@RedSox) July 23, 2023

But Bradish should be subbed in for one of Gausman and Gray, come on.

You would have like the Casas interview they just did--he made jokes about getting thrown out at second (and expressed his admiration for co-host Sean Casey because of his .300 career average).

Why are all the portraits of the finalists so hd? They don’t all need to be…

xp omg I hope it gets uploaded! I remembered him getting thrown out at second in…that Mets series? Or maybe it was the Braves one, he busted a gut for a triple in the Mets one

Pretty interesting discussion with three voters. What is the biggest factor in your Cy Young vote? Two of the three cited IP (so much for Bautista), all three agreed WAR was less important than with position players. Do milestones (Cabrera's Triple Crown, Judge's HR record, Acuna's 40/70) matter in your MVP vote? Not especially--another "data point."

NL Cy Young: Gallen, Snell, Webb...not having Strider in there is a huge surprise to me. I guess ERA still counts for much more than FIP.

Zac Gallen
Blake Snell
Logan Webb

Webb is the IP vote coming through. Really shocked by that - but pleased for him. He carried a whole staff and he pitched deep into games - he’s a modern Matt Cain with maybe better stuff? Strider’s ERA probably did for him but I thought the Ks and FIP might carry him.

But--remembering the strange way of doing this--all that means, probably, is that Strider finished fourth, and may be virtually even with the third-place finisher.

xp FIP is the only stat I could understand Gray being an AL finalist for, but these are writers, they look at the stats but who knows what they end up voting for in the end

Strider is only 24, and he’s incredible. He’ll be back.

But yeah…Gallen over Senga I don’t understand. Love Senga a lot, he started off a bit slow but looked better as the season went on.

Strider's ERA was too much for voters to deal with, it was almost as high as the career ERA for Jack Morris.

Justin Steele looked incredible most of the season but he ended really badly and probably tanked his chances with his last few starts.

If they'd revered IP in the '70s like they do now, I think Wilbur Wood would have won three Cy Youngs.

i did think the 20 wins would give him some Porcello Cy points

NL ROY: Carroll, Outman, Senga. Easy call.

(Senga would win many other years.)

NL ROY: Carroll, Senga, Outman

Corbin Carroll was preseason favourite, he’s probably going to walk off with actual MVP votes, he’s a lock. Senga is fantastic but you know, not a “rookie” in the same way. Outman kind of surprised by? Thought one of the Reds rookies (Steer or McLain) would sneak in. When the MLBPA voted for their choices, their top 3 was Carroll, Senga and Steer.

AL MVP: Ohtani, Seager, Semien
NL MVP: Acuña, Betts, Freeman

Great list of rookies with sub-3.00 ERA and 200+ K: Senga, Strider, Nomo, Gooden...and John Montefusco!

there doesn't seem to be much doubt about any of the major awards except for NL Cy

No surprises for MVP. Glad Semien grabs third. I thought Olson might edge out Freeman for third; either one's fine.

As I've mentioned many times, I really like Baseball Reference's "Career Shares" stat for the MVP and Cy Young, so I'm just as interested in down-ballot votes, and whether Verlander, Kershaw, Scherzer, Judge, and a few others move up the all-time lists.

there doesn't seem to be much doubt about any of the major awards except for NL Cy

I do understand the difference, but it's interesting that starting pitchers will get extra credit from the voters for IP (or "attendance" as one of the panelists euphemized), but Semien's 162 GP won't really mean anything in the MVP race (vs. Ohtani and Seager's considerable time missed). With everyday players, it almost becomes a plus to do what you do in fewer than 162 games: Ohtani hitting 44 HR in 135 games and Seager's 75 XBH and ~100 RBI in 120 games seem superhuman.

maybe Snell will surprise me w/a landslide, and i do think he's gonna take it bc that ERA is incredible and you can't ignore the Ks and maybe can ignore the walks. but i think Gallen has a good shot. Webb is in the deGrom/King Felix slot of "impressive stats, too bad about the record", but his non-W/L stats aren't eye-popping in the same way.

The panel just said that Freeman "might even" get 3,000 hits. I'd say he's got a good chance at 3,000/500 (think there's five or six others). The HR will be the tougher part.

The Casas interview from earlier:

https://www.mlb.com/video/casas-on-roty-consideration?q=casas&cp=CMS_FIRST&qt=FREETEXT&p=0

That’s so sweet, he’s so happy to talk to Sean Casey. Thank you for sharing!

Silver Sluggers:

https://www.mlb.com/news/silver-slugger-award-winners-2023

Nothing seems unreasonable at first glance. Best non-winner: Yordan Alvarez. (40 games in LF, 73 as a DH...If the Dodgers got to put Mookie up as a utility player for the GG, couldn't the Astros have done the same for Silver Slugger? If so, Alvarez would have been one of the three AL winners, I think, even with the missed time.)

Put him up as an outfielder, I mean, not as utility.

There might be a number of minimum appearances at a position maybe? Also, the AL OF competition was brutal, even for Yordan Alvarez, at a non-main position. His splits are actually much better when he plays the outfield as well, it must be some sort of minimum requirement.

You're probably right. Mookie's breakdown was 65 games at 2B, 14 at SS, and 98 in right (= 177, so obviously games where he switched mid-game), and that does seem to fit the definition of utility. 40 games in LF is a tough sell.

(Reminiscent of GG winner Rafael Palmeiro...)

As expected (no vote totals yet--I'm sure Carroll's unanimous).

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-rookie-of-the-year-award-winners-2023

Actually, both were unanimous, fifth or sixth time that's happened.

Ah - I don’t think either of them were?

https://www.mlb.com/news/2023-mlb-rookie-of-the-year-voting-totals

If I were to re-run for board mod, I'd make it everytime someone uses Canadian English in a thread title that would trigger a timed (30s?) challenge to create a duplicate thread in proper Quebecoix French, any errors (grave, aigu, circonflex, etc.) would result in a yellow card/ban.

Oh! I was looking at the wrong thing! Lol.
Carry on.

Here are the other times this has happened:

2017 — AL: Aaron Judge, New York; NL: Cody Bellinger, Los Angeles
1997 — AL: Nomar Garciaparra, Boston; NL: Scott Rolen, Philadelphia
1993 — AL: Tim Salmon, California; NL: Mike Piazza, Los Angeles
1987 — AL: Mark McGwire, Oakland; NL-Benito Santiago, San Diego

Strong group...Santiago was probably the worst, and he played for 20 seasons, GG, SS, 5-time All-Star, MVP support. Well, we'll see about Bellinger.

I wonder about santiago if we had modern metrics. I havent watched highlight reels of him but i remember him being

A) cool
B) a guy who would drop to one knee to get the low strike [ gestures at modern catchers ]
C) someone that baseball people liked
D) played forever ( see above)

Hall of the Pretty Good? Baseball Reference has him at 15.2 dWAR for his career, which is solid. Not much offensively, though--rarely walked, only slugged over .500 once (barely). I do remember he had a 30-game hitting streak.

Not the first Benito who comes up on auto-fill.

Mussolini is tough to compete with

Direct Trump quote?

Interesting Posnanski column today where he--knowingly, I think--flat-out contradicts himself. Summary:

1) All six big awards could well be unanimous (even the NL Cy, with Strider not in the top 3);

2) This might be the result of analytics, a general narrowing of who deserves the MVP/Cy/ROY--getting rid of narrative and other things;

3) He looks at some historical years and dismisses some of those non-winning first-place votes: "There were some years when it probably should have happened, like the aforementioned years, and also in 1993, when Frank Thomas did win the AL award unanimously, but Barry Bonds fell four votes shy, those four votes going to Lenny Dykstra, of all people. Lenny did have a superb year, but...come on."

4) Leading to this, though: "Shouldn’t we have something fun to argue about? I don’t know the answer to that. Maybe it’s better that we’re not screaming about someone giving a first-place MVP vote to Dansby Swanson because that person thinks his defense and presence entirely changed the Chicago Cubs. Maybe I’m silly for missing that part of baseball even a little bit."

I know what he means. Those arguments are fun. There's less to argue about now.

(He doesn't mention that there was actually a very strong case in '93 for John Olerud over Thomas. I was in awe of Thomas at the time, but Olerud led him in bWAR 7.8 to 6.2 and fWAR 8.1 to 6.3. Old story--Thomas won for HR/RBI.)

Plus, who wouldn't rather vote for the Big Hurt than this skinny, geeky looking guy who wore a batting helmet in the field (not meaning to be cavalier--he wore it because of the aneurysm he had at age 20)?

back then i remember some people made an issue of the fact he didn't slide a lot/enough either. he wasn't the fasted guy out there and i think his sometimes cautious base running rubbed people the wrong way who expected their players to hustle more and be more "scrappy"

Too bad Olerud didn't finish 2nd in '93, instead of 3rd behind Molitor. You would have hit upon the most mismatched pair of MVP runners-up ever (who also met in the World Series): Olerud and Dykstra.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_A2xqMXAAAHr8j?format=jpg&name=medium

CHRIS MARTIN MENTIONED

Snell absolutely deserves this award this year but I love that Logan Webb finished second. He got no run support, had a terrible win loss record and the voters still voted him second with one number one vote. Seemed like the writers are learning.

Here's the NL vote:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/38907982/padres-blake-snell-wins-2023-nl-cy-young-award

I meant to post earlier that I thought Strider might get a first-place vote even though he finished out of the top three, and that you wouldn't know if it was a) some ancient old-school guy who loved his 20 wins, or b) some Fangraphs true believer who loved his FIP. Didn't get one after all.

So Snell now becomes the latest guy teetering on the two-wins/rule-of-three fence. (Saberhagen, Santana, Kluber...there are a few.) Can he win a third Cy? If he does, he still would seem like--unlike deGrom--someone who'd have to do a lot more to be a viable HOF candidate.

Good god, I'd better mention Lincecum...

I did mention Lincecum to a friend of mine, but it was in the context of the state of Washington now having four Cy Youngs - two each for Lincecum and Snell. Maybe there was a fifth, I couldn’t find that map though.

Snell kind of feels fraudulent in the way Cole doesn’t, mainly cos Snell is/was more of a five and dive guy and that kind of feels like putting the thumb on the scale if you’re not facing the lineup again. Agree with Bee Ok, that was a really good showing for Webb & he deserves those votes for more than just his numbers. Honestly surprised Gray finished second but that’s my bias talking probably (i really like Gausman).

Daniel Kramer of MLB.com probably has the ballot closest to my own preferences for the AL (Cole, Gausman, Gray, López, Kirby) and Steve Megargee from the AP probably closest to my NL preferences (Snell, Webb, Steele, Gallen, Strider).

Without checking, I recall Snell had the same issue when he won his first Cy; he was up against another strong candidate who pitched more innings.

On the hometown front, I don't know if I was surprised or not that Bassitt got a couple of votes. Must have been someone who only saw the half of the season where he was great; as I posted a few times, I've never seen a more schizophrenic pitcher from start to start.

For some reason, I thought there were a bunch of two-time/non-HOF Cy winners, but the ones I named were pretty much it: Snell, deGrom, and Kluber are active, Lincecum and Santana retired, and the only other one is Denny McLain, who won in '69, too. For non-active, two-time MVPs not in the Hall, it's just Murphy and Gonzalez; Harper's still playing, and Ohtani will join him today.

John Schneider got a third-place vote for AL MOY from Joe Reedy of the Associated Press? I can't begin to imagine how he arrived at that.

Pitchers with 2 Cy Young Awards

Blake Snell (AL 2018, NL 2023)
Jacob deGrom (NL 2018-19)
Corey Kluber (AL 2014, '17)
Tim Lincecum (NL 2008-09)
Johan Santana (AL 2004, '06)
Bret Saberhagen (AL 1985, '89)
Denny McLain (AL 1968-69)

there isn't a player on this list who doesn't strike me as a HOF-caliber guy, with injuries being the only issue (or in the case of Kluber, injuries plus a relative late start.) Snell is the only exception for me, he's just a deeply inconsistent pitcher and he's been fortunate to have his two excellent seasons in years/leagues where the competition had their own flaws. not that he didn't deserve to win either time, but the other six were likely in the top 3 pitchers in MLB during their relatively brief peak seasons. I'm not sure if Snell is even top 10, not because of how well he's capable of pitching but how well he actually pitches.

from the above list, I think Santana might actually get in someday, his peak was a bit longer than some, and despite the low win totals he was better than so many guys already in there. If there can be room for lower peak/longer career guys like Mussina, and i'm sure eventually Sabathia and Greinke, they should revisit him. i think it might be what'll help deGrom someday, assuming he comes back and manages a few more seasons where he's even just good to very good, not necessarily "top 10 ever" caliber.

I think I saw a side by side comparison between Halladay and Santana's ten year peaks, and they were really similar. Santana at his best was probably more dominant than Halladay at his best. Plus he deserved to win at least one more CY (2005) and perhaps more.

Blessed beyond belief. DFAd to Cy Young finalist. NEVER stop believing in yourself. Go against the grain, no such thing as a cookie cutter plan, everyone’s story is completely their own 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

— Kevin Gausman (@KevinGausman) November 16, 2023

Santana and deGrom are the only two from that list who strike me as HOF-caliber (and deGrom needs a little more); the others have peaks that are too short or too diffuse or both. The comparison I've seen more than once is Santana's six-year-peak vs. Koufax's.

https://baseballegg.com/2020/09/01/johan-santana-vs-sandy-koufax-should-they-both-be-in-the-hall-of-fame/

Koufax is a good comparison, as is Dizzy Dean. i do think the MLB HOF is moving more towards including the peak dominance consideration, similar to the NBA and NFL halls.

i think that's how it started off too. thinking guys like Kid Nichols, Addie Joss, Old Hoss Radbourn... all had short careers/dominant years. maybe it was just with pitching since long careers were rarer back then (maybe something to do with throwing 500 innings a season!)

also tuberculosis!

Since I play a fuckload of ootp baseball, I’m on some Reddit subs, and recently a guy was looking into how to add some vintage illness into his historic sim… including TB, Bright's Disease, Alcohol and lead poisioning and suicide!

We know so little about him, everyone is calling this a “dog reveal”

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F_F3ZzIaoAARFrq?format=jpg&name=900x900

I was watching the announcements on MLB TV--someone cracked that Shohei's dog both fetches and throws.

Down-ballot stuff...Thought Arraez would finish higher than 8th. Schwarber got two 10th place votes: has to be the first sub-.200 hitter with MVP votes since the '60s, maybe even ever. Bo got a 9th- and a 10th-place vote--questionable. Josh Naylor got a 10-place vote; guessing he's on Twitter right now, taunting everyone who got shut out.

Two big jumps on the career awards-share lists:

Betts moved to 19th on the MVP list (3.80). He's got a good chance to move into the top 10 before he's finished (A-Rod is 11th with 5.23).

Cole moved to 14th on the Cy Young list (2.90). Halladay's 11th right now with 3.50, so ditto.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/mvp_cya.shtml

What am I looking at here?

Baseball Reference's awards-shares leaders...Any year you get MVP/Cy votes, you're given a percentage of the total votes available. Shoehei won the AL MVP unanimously this year, 420 points out of a possible 420; he gets 1.00 award share, 420/420. Seager got 264 points, so he gets 0.63. You add them all up over your career, and that's the list. It's a good way to get a truer picture of someone like Palmeiro, say, who never won but who drew votes 10 different seasons. He totaled 1.20 shares for his career.

Three of the top six guys on the Cy Young list are active: Verlander is third, Scherzer fifth, Kershaw sixth. But Clemens at #1--and Bonds on the MVP list--are basically uncatchable, though Trout early on looked like might catch Bonds.