Saturday, May 2, 2009

One Month Awards

Believe it or not, we've already wrapped up the first month of Major League Baseball. It seemed to have gone by so quickly with the majority of attention and excitement being drawn to the NBA playoffs, NFL draft, Tiger Woods, etc. But since we are officially out of April, I thought I'd go ahead and give out a number of MLB awards. I fell a little behind and didn't get this done right at the conclusion of April, so the following are what my votes would look like were the season to end today, which is the second of May. Bon appetit!

AL MVP- Zack Grienke
Honorable Mention- Evan Longoria, Kevin Youkilis
NL MVP- Albert Pujols
Honorable Mention- Chase Utley, Dan Haren

AL Cy Young- Zack Grienke
Honorable Mention- Gil Meche, Felix Hernandez
NL Cy Young- Dan Haren
Honorable Mention- Javier Vazquez, Tim Lincecum, Johan Santana

AL Reliever of the Year- Scott Downs
Honorable Mention- Frank Francisco, Jose Arredondo
NL Reliever of the Year- Jonathan Broxton
Honorable Mention- Chad Qualls, Juan Gutierrez, Ryan Franklin

AL Hank Aaron- Kevin Youkilis
Honorable Mention- Victor Martinez, Evan Longoria
NL Hank Aaron- Albert Pujols
Honorable Mention- Chase Utley, Raul Ibanez

AL ROY- Ricky Romero
Honorable Mention- Andrew Bailey, Scott Richmond
NL ROY- Brian Barden
Honorable Mention- Mark Difelice, Jordan Schafer

AL LVP- Ty Wigginton
Dishonorable Mention- Alexi Casilla, David Ortiz
NL LVP- Brian Giles
Dishonorable Mention- Cody Ross, Edwin Encarnacion

AL Cy Yuk- Mark Hendrickson
Dishonorable Mention- Brandon McCarthy, Fausto Carmona
NL Cy Yuk- Aaron Cook
Dishonorable Mention- Jeff Suppan, John Lannon, Brett Myers

AL Gold Gloves
P- Gil Meche
C- Jason Varitek
1B- Chris Davis
2B- Placido Polanco
3B- Joe Crede
SS- Marco Scutaro
OF- Nelson Cruz
OF- Franklin Gutierrez
OF- David DeJesus

NL Gold Gloves
P- Paul Maholm
C- Bengie Molina
1B- Casey Kotchman
2B- Kazuo Matsui
3B- Geoff Blum
SS- J.J. Hardy
OF- Jay Bruce
OF- Nyjer Morgan
OF- Eric Byrnes


AL Silver Sluggers
C- Victor Martinez
1B- Kevin Youkilis
2B- Ian Kinsler
3B- Evan Longoria
SS- Marco Scutaro
OF- Adam Jones
OF- Jason Bay
OF- Nick Swisher
DH- Adam Lind

NL Silver Sluggers
P- Yovani Gallardo
C- Yadier Molina
1B- Albert Pujols
2B- Chase Utley
3B- Ryan Zimmerman
SS- Ryan Theriot
OF- Raul Ibanez
OF- Manny Ramirez
OF- Carlos Beltran


Notes: Hanley Ramirez is actually having the second best fielding season of any shortstop in the National League. It's doubtful that he'll be able to keep that up, but he did show vast improvement last year in comparison to the season before. If he can keep up this defense and just get his hitting back to where it normally is, he'll probably become the best player in baseball... Javier Vazquez continues to fly well under the radar. He has the second best FIP in the MLB, behind only Zack Grienke... The Silver Sluggers actually seem pretty close to what they'll probably end up being by season's end, save the shortstop position, which I'm sure will be different next month... Among all qualified players, Brian Giles has actually been the least valuable in baseball with a -0.9 WAR. That's pretty surprising. What's also surprising are some other names that make out the bottom 25 position players: Jimmy Rollins, Derrek Lee, David Ortiz, Garret Atkins, and Jason Giambi... Albert Pujols is awesome.

One month down, five to go.

3 comments:

Rook said...

Grif is better at going in-depth with things like this. He'll bust out whole ballots and everything.

Unknown said...

to give nellie cruz a gold glove proves you have not watched a single rangers game. As one of about 12 rangers fans (approximately) and also one who loooooves nellie (for his stick) I wish you would reconsider. He's more of a butcher in right than...i don't know what.

Rook said...

Well, first off, I happen to know Grif watches a great deal of Rangers games, and he too had Cruz down for a gold glove. Secondly, at the time of this posting I believe Cruz had the third best UZR among all AL outfielders. Since then he's dropped down to sixth, which is still pretty damn good. He also has the sixth best UZR/150.