2005 Awards (MVP/Cy Young/ROY/etc) Speculation Thread

ROY AL - Street, ROY NL... I just haven't paid attention, really.

2004
5.25 (2nd)

-- gear (speed.to.roa...), September 4th, 2005.

I was hedging one team-based variable vs. another so yeah, maybe give it to Carpenter just for shits and giggles.

-- TemporaryLeeee (leeee...), September 4th, 2005.

And I don't know what you're suggesting... are you saying the MVP this year should be Bonds anyway? ;)

Andreuw Jones! Or however you spell it!

Pujols or Lee. Jones is nearly 100 points lower on OPS. I don't see how you give it to him. Sentimentally I think Lee should get it, but it probably be Pujols year as I think the voters will think he's owed for all those Bonds' runners up.

No idea on NL ROY. Francoeur's kind of slowed down, hasn't he?

Santana? Maybe Zito? Colon? I think the White Sox pitchers have eliminated themselves. Rivera is a joke, esp. since he's started blowing games. Since Halladay got hurt it's pretty wide open.

Rodriguez gets MVP.

Street gets AL ROY (unless Johnson or Swisher go totally apeshit the last month of the season) although to be fair Blanton probably deserves it a little more.

On a side note: Pujols has 13 stolen bases (CS twice)?!?! That's pretty impressive.

Pujols has had the best over all season of the top three canidates, but I think one can make a case that the Braves took off when Andruw Jones went on his homer binge, which at the time was when Chipper was out for about 50 games and their starting pitching staff was rocked with injuries. Jones pretty much carried the team into the lead in the East and they haven't looked back. Other than hitting home runs, AJ hasn't really hit that great in the past month. I think it is Pujol's year to become MVP. Derek Lee's season is about the same as Puhols, but the Cubs haven't gone anywhere, so I can't see giving him the award.

I have no idea who will win the AL Cy Young, it probably depends on how the end of the season plays out. If Colon wins 21-22 games and the Angels win the West, it will probably be him. If not and the Yanks don't choke out of the playoffs, it might be Mariano Rivera's to win like Al Pacino winning an Oscar for Scent of a Woman, more of a career achievement award or something.

I don't know if A-Rod or Ortiz really deserve to be MVP. If you bat in lineups like those and don't put up those numbers, I have to question what is going on. The Red Sox and Yank lineups are at a different level than the rest of the MLB. Minus the Yanks going into a tailspin, I think it is A-Rod's award as his numbers are the best but he should thank his teammates.

Pre-All Star

W-L  ERA   IP      K      BB    HR
7-5  3.98  124.1   143    26    15

Post-All Star

W-L  ERA   IP      K      BB    HR
6-1  1.49  72.1    62     10    3

In other words, he's doing it again. Like last year, he's going to blow away the field in the final few weeks and take the award in a walk.

Even right now, his K-rate and WHIP are comparable to last year's.

Except that in 2003, A-Rod and Delgado (who also played for a so-so team) were miles better than anyone else in the league, whereas this year Lee has fallen back into the pack relative to his stellar first half and is competing against guys having stellar seasons for winning clubs. Alex is right -- Pujols will get the award for being Bonds' bridesmaid for so long.

Lee - 71.4
Pujols - 65.6
Cabrera - 58.8
Giles - 54.4
Bay - 53.6

followed by Griffey, Ensberg, Wright and Andruw. The Andruw Propaganda Machine is cranking so high right now that Ravech even mentioned him on a BBTN Triple Crown hiccup, failing to explain how he was gonna make up 60+ BA points in 3 weeks.

In my mind, Lee and Pujols are virtually tied, but I can't imagine a 50-HR CF on a division winner can lose the award unless Derrek or Albert make some history. That Jones doesn't make nearly as many runs as the leaders... the BBWAA won't notice.

If Pujols had missed as much playing time as say Chipper Jones has this season, the Cards would probably still be in 1st place in the Central. If Andruw Jones misses 50 games, especially when the Braves made their run, I doubt the Braves would be playing .500 baseball. I still think this is Pujols year to win the MVP, as he has been both the best player in the NL and probably nearly as important to his team as AJ has been to the Braves.

Pettitte is having perhaps his 3rd-best season; the Stros may have 3 of the top 5 Cy finishers.

Let me make this as clear as I can: Andruw Jones is not one of the two most valuable players in the National League. There's no amount of extra credit you can assign--the Braves' success, his durability on a fragile team, his being the only Braves' outfielder old enough to know that Will Smith used to be The Fresh Prince--that makes up 70-odd points of OBP, along with the other markers Lee and Pujols have on him. In fact, Jones slots in well behind a number of other National Leaguers [in WARP]...

Jones isn't the best center fielder in the league: that's Jim Edmonds. He is arguably not the MVP of his own team: that may be Marcus Giles. I wouldn't use WARP as the only determinant of my MVP ballot, but it says something that Jones is three wins behind Lee, one and a half behind Pujols, and trails a handful of other players as well. If you look at VORP, or runs created, or really any performance metric, you'll get the same result... Jones has been stronger in the second half than he was in the first, which tends to garner attention; he plays for a team that will go to the postseason; he's a center fielder, and as such more prone to highlight-reel defensive plays that show off his skill... That's what the voters like to see.

Slightly off-topic: I LOVE the fact that only Santana is ahead of Halladay in AL VORP. I wonder how many others will pass him before the season is through? Over/under, anyone? 3.5?

It'll be like a rugby scrum!

Morbs, I love you but your assertion of Marcus Giles as MVP of the Braves is weak-sauce: Giles' has seen no improvement over his last 2 seasons which at his age is worthy of mild brow-raising. Is Giles' VORP even 1/2 of Jones (sorry, Sunday am laziness)?

AJ is NL MVP.

Ass-lanta VORPs:
Andruw - 62.3
Smoltz - 56.9
Giles - 44.8
Chipper - 42.8
Furcal - 42.2
Francouer - 24.5

Top Card VORPs (hitters):

Pujols: 95.4
Edmonds: 49.5
Eckstein: 34.2

Who's voted for Comeback Players of the Year? Giambi and Griffey, obv.

I thought the MVP was for regular season play. Don't they have to turn their ballots in before the playoffs start?

Is Blanton ROY-eligible? I know Mauer isn't.

that said, his winning the mvp over a-rod would be a crime.

*(although cf: Astros walking Bonds with the bases loaded when ahead by 2 runs).

But when it comes to MVP, you're looking back. You can, with some objectivity, say that a player was big in certain clutch situations that were extremely valuabe to the team, can't you?

Sure, if McGwire had been on the Cubs hitting in Sosa's spot then maybe he would have done just as well and driven in even more runs. But he wasn't on the Cubs -- Sosa was the guy who happened to be there, delivering in the big games on the better club while McGwire was on a third place club. I didn't have a problem with Sosa winning (although I was shocked that it was a unanimous vote).

But if 'clutch' is not a skill set, then you're basically giving an award for dice rolling. No can (should) do.

Most valuable = best, and that's A-Rod. In fact, if A-Rod had his 2005 offensive numbers as a DH, he'd still be the deserving one.

Most valuable = "most valuable"

problem is, his entire argument is DUMB, because a)there's no real boundary here, it's kinda silly to discount the additional value of a clutch hit because of happenstance while ignoring happenstance as it effects all sorts of other things, including but not limited to the obvious runs & rbis but also, to a degree we ignant & passive spectators will surely never comprehend, singles, doubles, triples, home runs, etc. that is LUCK IS PART OF THE GAME, we all know this, and b) whether or not clutch hitting is a skill is irrelevant when we're talking about a seasonal honor designed to award a player's value over that season, it's not actually about "skill" at all and if it just went to the best player, we'd be giving it to barry bonds, eh?, and what's wrong with being lucky anyway, hm?; and c) i've forogtten, i think, but there was a c... but fortunately the doc has reached the proper conclusion despite the EGREGIOUS FOLLY OF HIS WAYS so he's alright by me.
l
anyway i really dig mvp args. i remember somewhere bill james mentioned a film in which a college professor began ranting about how willie mays was robbed of the '62 (? total guess) award. i've wanted to rent that movie for that scene alone, anyone know what i'm taking about?

Shove-Rod has netted the Yankees more runs than anyone else in the AL. Period.

Most. Valuable. Player. Not 'best.' Value may be a product of luck, skill or context.

To take an example from the NBA - Steve Nash wasn't the 'best' player in the league last season. But he was the most valuable based on his team's performance before and after Nash and how he impacted that performance.

Comparisons to basketball are tenuous because of the drastically different nature of the sport ... for instance, lots of people noted that Dallas won more games than they did the year before, or that Phoenix would have made the playoffs even without Nash. The point is, running an offense through Nash is TOTALLY different than running an offense without him, those are entirely different styles of play and you can't just mix and match players like we do in baseball, where we can say that ARod's VORP or Win Shares are worth X number of wins for ANY club he plays with.

Winning the World Series is also a matter of rolling the dice ... roughly speaking, each of eight playoff teams has a 12.5% chance of winning, plus or minus a few percent. Still, we don't award the championship to the team with the best Pythagorean record, we give it to the team that actually wins the real-life games. Similarly, we don't always have to give the MVP to the guy with the best VORP -- there's nothing wrong with giving it to the guy who so happened to deliver in a lot of big games, driving in 150 runs and helping his team win their division.

I think the BBWAA agrees, which is why I give as much of a shit about the award as the Oscars.

This is still the case, and it looks like it will remain that way barring some truly miraculous final starts:

Santana 70.1
Halladay 53.1
Buerhle 51.1
Colon 49.5
Millwood 49.2
Garland 48.3
Washburn 48.0
Lackey 47.6
Zito 43.9
Garcia 43.0

Santana
Wins: 15 (tied for 7th in AL, tied for 15th in MLB)
ERA: 2.92 (tied for 1st in AL, tied for 9th in MLB)
WHIP: 0.98 (1st in AL, 2nd in MLB)
BAA: .212 (1st in AL, 3rd in MLB)
Ks: 229 (1st in AL, 1st in MLB)

Colon
Wins: 20 (1st in AL, 3rd in MLB)
ERA: 3.51 (7th in AL, 19th in MLB)
WHIP: 1.15 (3rd in AL, 9th in MLB)
BAA: .254 (13th in AL, 21st in MLB)
Ks: 158 (7th in AL, 31st in MLB)

AL MVP - A-Rod (if Yankees win division) Ortiz (if BoSox win division)
AL CY - Colon, I guess

NL MVP - Lee (possibly blinded by homerism and VORP)
NL CY - Dontrelle

"Whether or not gauging clutch hitting over a long period of time is baloney or not, Ortiz has hit something like six or seven homeruns in Boston's last at bat this season to go with all of those big hits last year during the playoffs. It may be all coincidence, but it is notable."

"can you really not find it in you to admit that the clutch thing ISN'T baloney?"

"Two more slices of baloney for the Big Papi!"

"slices of baloney = rbi's now?"

Considering in the SABR world RBI's are a bad bad word, maybe a slice of baloney should be the proper term for a clutch RBI.

I would prefer Santana/Clemens/Pujols/ARod.

.303/.359/.532, 11 HR, 46 RBI (in 219 PA)

His OPS against lefties has gone up 100 points each of the last two years! How do you pitch to him?

HEE SEOP CHOI TAKE HEART (and get away from fuckshits that won't play you)!

Oswalt is 7th in MLB. Definitely impressive.

After last night's start, Buerhle finally passed Halladay. That's two.

Lidge is definitely tired. I don't think he's gonna make it through the playoffs without continuing the trend of meltdowns.

I do think Wheeler is tiring a bit. He had 4 straight hitters 0-2 today and had a really tough time finishing these guys off. The first two fouled off several pitches each before making outs and the next two got base hits.