2006 ILB American League Rookie of the Year

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If Liriano was hurt at the beginning of the year and had gotten healthy by the end, I would probably feel the way you do, but the fact is the guy is/was not able to pitch at the end of the regular season. ROY is a regular season award, but some value has to be placed on at least being present by the end to ya know do a little something in post-season, assuming your team gets that far.

Only retrospectively.

No it was just pretty stupid initially. It took a while before it became monumentally stupid.

JETER = MVP 1996-2006

"IT'S OKAY GUYS! JUST PUT UP GREAT NUMBERS FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS! WE DON'T NEED YOU TO EVEN PLAY THE WHOLE YEAR! DON'T EVEN TRY TO DODGE THOSE LINE DRIVES, ROY!"

Somehow, you're concluding that Liriano wasn't available in September "when the team needed him", as if the team didn't need him when they were ten games under .500, went on a 30-5 run or whatever to climb from nowhere and back into the playoff race. Were the September games really that much more important?

Look I am giving a small amount of credit to Verlander for the fact that a) the Tigers made the post-season and b) he started 30 games and managed to not fuck his arm to the point where he would not be available for the post-season (unlike Liriano who can only say a) is true.) I think that is worth 4.6 points of VORP or 1.2 points of WARP1. Either way, I don't have a problem with Liriano getting the award. He pitched great and he's a big part of the reason why the Twins made the playoffs. But getting more starts and still having something left by the end of the year has value IMO.

Haha, I guess I deserve that!

The durability argument certainly has merit (like I said upthread, it's kind of a one-season version of peak value vs career value) but leveraging of September games relative to June ones is extremely dubious, IMO. With that logic, one could argue that Verlander is undeserving because of his 6.83 ERA in August and 4.82 ERA in September (coincident with his team posting the worst record in the AL Central from mid-August onward -- when the games counted the most).

Bullshit, I made fun of that trade when it happened on Bruce McGowan's weekend show.

Liriano - 109 (5)
Verlander - 108 (4)
Papelbon - 77 (1)
Weaver - 58
Markakis - 40
Kenji - 33
Zumaya - 33
Kinsler - 24
Chris Ray - 6
Bobby Jenks - 6
German - 5
Sowers - 3
Melky - 2
Napoli - 2
Bonser - 2

Liriano was the throw-in because of his injury history; Bonser was the prize prospect given up, mostly because he'd been stalling and wearing out his welcome in the minors.

AJ Cancer was a consistent .300ish hitter with an .824 OPS in 2003, had moderately decent HR power for a catcher, which was a position the Giants needed to fill. This side of Pudge, AJ was the as good a bet as was out there, and overpaying at the time for semi-certainty was to be tolerated.

...and was headed to the most lethal lefty-power killing stadium known to man, hence: he set a 20 year record for GIDPs.

Whining != Gloating! I hate the Giants, so I was thrilled!

This side of Pudge, AJ was the as good a bet as was out there, and overpaying at the time for semi-certainty was to be tolerated.

I thought that they should have given Torrealba a chance, and giving up three prospects for a mediocre catcher is craziness. Pretty much everyone who wrote an article about the subject at the time for a non-Giants market said as much.

AJ is a gamer who gets under the skin of the other team! ZOMG. Just that the unfortunate combination of Cancer + Tomko + Stan Conte's groin = Giant disaster.