Breakdown of the Connie Mack Award

So now that I’ve posted my End of the Year Award winners, I thought I’d take my readers through my thought process, see the others I considered for each award and explain why I chose who I chose.  We’ll start with the Connie Mack Awards (Manager of the Year).

In the National League I chose Davey Johnson of the Washington Nationals.  It was not too difficult to come to that decision, though there were certainly others worth considering.  Mike Matheny has done a great job in his first season in St. Louis.  Bruce Bochy deserves some credit for getting his Giants back into the race and winning the NL West.  But for me, it really came down to Davey Johnson and the Cincinnati Reds Dusty Baker.  Baker's club played hard all year.  After losing closer Ryan Madson in spring training and then Joey Votto for most of the second half, the Reds were able wear down the Pirates and outlast the Cardinals.  The Reds are coming back after a miserable year in 2011 where they criminally underachieved.  In addition, Baker led this team in what was essentially a lame-duck season this year as the top brass in the Queens City haven’t seen fit to give him a contract for next season.  But the players adore him, and he hasn’t worn out pitchers’ arms in the way he used to.  His Reds had a great year and were the best team in the second half this year.  But I still have to go with Johnson.

The Nationals skipper was coaching in his first full season in the bigs after an absence of over a decade.  He took over a team that had a lot of expectations, a lot of young players and a lot of hope.  D.C has been desperate for some good baseball ever since the Nationals arrived.  And Johnson didn’t let them down this year, leading his club to the best record in the National League and their first NL East title.  They got bounced in the NLDS, but they had a great season regardless.  Others were deserving, but Johnson is the winner in my book.

Now the AL was a much harder decision.  It essentially came down to Buck Showalter in Baltimore and Bob Melvin in Oakland.  Either guy is worthy of the award.  If I thought ties were acceptable, that’s what I’d do.  But I think it’s important to try and pick a winner, no matter how difficult it is.  And that’s what I did.  I ended up going with Buck Showalter in a very close race.  Here’s how I came to this decision.

The A’s were one game better than the Orioles.  That helped Melvin.  As did the fact that he took a team with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball that was expected to lose 100 games and was able to beat the two time defending AL Champion Texas Rangers and the big offseason winners, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.  Those teams both have payrolls over $120 million, while the A’s barely break $50 million.  What he did was incredibly impressive.  Moving to the other finalist in the AL East, Showalter had a fairly low payroll, though more than the A’s.  However big spenders in Boston and New York and even Toronto blow his team’s payroll out of the water.  A few years ago, this would have been easier.  The AL East has been the class of baseball for years.  An Oriole team climbing from the bottom to second in the division and winning the wildcard would pretty much seal this for him.  But this season, the AL West was actually the better division.  So that all seems to break Melvin’s way.  But, the big difference for me was the culture of losing in Baltimore.  The A’s are by no means a powerhouse that consistently wins.  But they’ve had successful seasons in the past with three different groups of dominant starters and some division titles in the early part of the millennium.  But the Orioles haven’t tasted playoff baseball since 1997.  They have been one of the least desired free agent locations for years.  An assistant GM in Toronto turned down the full GM job in Baltimore, to keep his ASSISTANT title with the Blue Jays.  And we are talking an assistant GM for the Blue Jays, not the Yankees or Red Sox.  In a much more publicized rejection, Jerry DiPoto chose the Angels over the Orioles and some of the biggest free agent acquisitions of the decade.  This is what the Orioles had to deal with.  The GM they settled on hadn’t worked in baseball in a decade.  But he took some pieces that others overlooked, built a team of cast-offs, and sent it down to Buck Showalter to do his best.  And Showalter’s best was the best in the league this season, in my opinion.  He took a group that no one believed in, made them believe in themselves, and kept them going all season long, winning a ton of close games, and overcoming a gross run-differential to win in spite of everything.  So, no disrespect to Melvin, and if anyone voted for Melvin I couldn’t blame them, but I had to go with Buck for the incredible job he did with the Orioles.

Okay so that's part one.  I'll follow with my MVP breakdowns after this.

Goose Gossage Awards

Forgot to post my Goose Gossage Award Winners.  (Relievers of the Year)

For the NL:  Craig Kimbrel

For the AL:  Jim Johnson

Explanations to follow.

End of the Year Awards

As a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, one of our duties is to vote in one of the 4 yearly voting opportunities.  One of those opportunities is upon us as it’s time to vote for the end of the year awards.  It’s also the first voting opportunity that has come up since I joined the Alliance, and I’m honored and excited to be a part of it.  Here are the awards we are voting for:

The Connie Mack Award (compare to Manager of the Year)

The Willie Mays Award (compare to Rookie of the Year)

The Goose Gossage Award (compare to Reliever of the Year)

The Walter Johnson Award (compare to Cy Young Award)

The Stan Musial Award (compare to MVP)

So here are my winners, with a breakdown of my voting following in my upcoming posts. 

The Connie Mack Award

NL:            Davey Johson

AL:            Buck Showalter

The Willie Mays Award

NL:            Wade Miley

AL:            Mike Trout

The Goose Gossage Award

NL:            Craig Kimbrel

AL:            Fernando Rodney

The Walter Johnson Award

NL:            R.A Dickey

AL:            Jered Weaver

The Stan Musial Award

NL:            Ryan Braun

AL:            Miguel Cabrera

I’ll be following this post with a breakdown of how I made my picks, the other people I considered and some final thoughts on the season.  Share some of your picks.  I’d love to read them.

Facebook Page

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Baseball’s Historic Wildcard Game Overshadowed by their beloved “Human Element”

The first ever Wildcard Round Playoff game took place at Turner Field in Atlanta on Friday evening.  The game was historic because it was the first of it’s kind.  It also featured two of the National League’s most successful franchises, the defending World Series champs taking on the team they eliminated on the last day of the season last year.  This would have been the matchup we saw last year if there were a second wildcard.  It was the final game for Chipper Jones, one of the greatest switch hitters in baseball.  His next stop is Cooperstown.  And the final game of his career, a game played in his home stadium in a town where he spent his entire career, a game so historic for him that his number 10 was cut into the outfield grass, is going to be remembered for the all important “human element” that Bud Selig wants to protect more than the integrity of our national pastime.  A game rife with potential headlines is instead dominated by the memories of a call bad enough to make me wonder if the NFL’s replacement refs found work in MLB’s postseason.

For those of you who didn’t see the game, the Braves were trailing 6-3 in the bottom of the 8^th.  There was one out in the inning with men on first and second.  The young shortstop, Andrelton Simmons, hit a shallow sly into left field that dropped between the Cardinals shortstop and left fielder.  The shortstop, Pete Kozma, called off the left fielder as he raced back for the catch.  However the ball continued to travel, further into the outfield than Kozma thought, and he lost it.  The ball dropped between Kozma and Matt Holliday for what looked like a bloop single, with the runners moving up.  The bases were then loaded with one out for Brian McCann and the crowd was going crazy.  But then the unthinkable happened.  Sam Holbrook, one of the two extra umpires provided by major league baseball for playoff games put his hand up at the last possible second, invoking the infield fly rule as the ball landed on the grass.

The crowd was understandably disgusted, and after watching the replay on the jumbo-tron, proceeded to shower the field with trash, perhaps hoping no one would notice with all the garbage Sam Holbrook was spewing.  The call was so bad that Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez finished the game under protest, though major league baseball denied an appeal on the play saying judgment calls aren’t up for review.  While the sentiment is true, the Braves were arguing that two aspects of the infield fly rule that they believe weren’t met.  First, the infielder had to make more than an ordinary effort to get to the ball, a ball that he actually couldn’t get to.  In addition, the rule states that the umpires shall call the infield fly rule immediately, not a half a second before the ball strikes the outfield grass.  However, ambiguous wording of a complex rule ended up being advantageous to MLB, as they have absolutely no interest in overturning any on the field rulings after the fact, as they want to avoid that can of worms.  The fact is that while the Braves are correct in saying that two aspects of the infield fly rule weren’t met, both the determination of ordinary effort and the determination of what an “immediate” call is are both judgment calls.  They are up to the judgment of the umpire.  Most people would define an immediate call as within about 3 seconds of the ball striking the bat, not 10 seconds later as the play has almost reached a conclusion independent of official interference.  But, again, the concepts of immediacy and effort are both left up to the umpire’s judgment, and judgment calls are not under the MLB umbrella of appeal.  Even if it was, I’m sure they wouldn’t overturn the call, claiming that there’s no proof that the call had a direct effect on the outcome of the game.  I agree, but I would also point out that there is no proof that the call WOULDN’T have an effect on the outcome of the game.  And the aftereffects of this call look like they’ll have more staying power than the memory of this first wildcard game.  Already we’ve seen a wave of criticism and discussion about the call.  I personally enjoyed this article by Jay Busbee of Yahoosports.  Or you could check out this article here.  And don’t forget about this one here.  Or even this more reasoned article from Tomahawk Take. 

Now, as a Braves fan, I can tell you that this play is not the reason Atlanta lost the game.  They couldn’t hit a thing and made three throwing errors leading to 4 unearned runs.  But, the team that plays the best doesn’t always win the game.  And regardless of the way the game went down, now there will always be some aspect of doubt as to what would have happened.  Any time an umpire potentially changes the outcome of a game it’s bad news, especially when he changes it with a terrible call.  The Braves were already the guinea pigs of this single game playoff experiment, which does more to de-value the regular season than any nightmare scenario dreamed up by the CEOs of the BCS.  The Braves won 94 games and had a 6 game lead over the Cards for the first wildcard.  And in one day, their season ends after a great year.  Baseball diehards already were shaky on a 5 game playoff series because they thought it devalued all the good work a team did in the regular season.  One game is a crapshoot, where any team can win.  It’s moderately exciting for baseball fans that aren’t rooting for either team involved in the playoff.  But it’s maddening to fans of a team that played great all year and has their season decided by a roll of the dice.  And if your starter gets hurt in the first, or your best hitter pulls in a muscle in BP, or, God forbid, an umpire changes the game with a bad call, there is no time available for you to fix it and make up for the mistake or bad fortune.  It’s one and done.  It’s not baseball.  It’s a football mentality in a non-football world.  Baseball is loath to change, except in situations that could earn it more money, even if that’s not what’s best for the game.  Honestly, the Commissioner’s Office is an analog player in a digital world.  But the answer isn’t to keep everything the same, hop in a time machine and see how you do.  The way to keep up is either to hold true to your essence or make small changes that improve the game itself.  Instead they try to keep everything the same but change its format.  Not a recipe for success.

I’m okay with baseball being slow to change.  I think they have a good product and they’ve been around a long time with a lot of success.  They should think hard about any changes they want to make.  But the problem is, they do change things.  They change plenty of things.  And the things they change are all built around money.  Again, that’s fine.  But don’t refuse to change aspects of the game that could feasibly make it better, while claiming that the game is too sacred to handle any adjustments, even the positive ones.  Instant replay is a controversial issue in the game.  I’m not sure where I end up on it.  But claiming you don’t want it because you want to protect the human error element is backward and shortsighted.  Sticking to that claim while making commercial breaks between innings longer and adding commercial breaks between pitching changes in order to sell more add time is insulting and hypocritical.

The world has changed around baseball.  The introduction of television, steroids and instant replay has an effect on the game.  To ignore that effect (steroids) is not a good idea.  To claim that its introduction will negatively affect the game (instant replay) is blatantly untrue.  To do both of those things, then bend over backwards making changes to reap the awards of television is nothing short of offensive.  The only reason this play didn’t shake the world in the same fashion that the Packers/Seahawks Hail Mary travesty did is because this play didn’t directly contribute to one team winning or losing.  Well that, and because it wasn’t on Monday night football.  (P.S.  My favorite NFL team….the Green Bay Packers.  The gods of officiating hate me).  At the end of the day, a potentially great game is largely forgotten in the midst of one of the worst calls I can remember.  Adding to the dismay is the fact that this was an historic game for major league baseball, though not a popular game that hurts the brand more than it brings in viewers.  But at least baseball found a way to protect the all-important human element of the game, the reason I think most of us tune in to the playoffs. 

P.S.  Baseball’s official Twitter page used to have a sentence on it’s page saying “We don’t understand the infield fly rule, either”.  I’m not overly surprised.  They took it down shortly after Friday’s game.  I’m sure that’ll solve everything.

Strasburg innings limit based on “lots” of science…the Nationals just won’t share any of it

The decision to shut down Stephen Strasburg has been talked about all season.  The question was, if the Nationals are good enough to get into the playoffs this season, would they still shut him down?  While we debated it all offseason and in the beginning part of this season, by the All Star break it seemed like we would likely see playoff baseball in Washington for the first time since 1933.  The Nationals are 6.5 games up in the NL East, and even if they fall, they would be in line for a wildcard slot as the team directly behind them in the division, the Atlanta Braves, are currently first in the Wildcard standings.  However, even now 130+ games into the season and with the playoffs right around the corner, the Nationals are insisting that they will shut down their best pitcher right before the important baseball starts.  It’s a wildly unpopular decision.  And it’s a decision that didn’t have to go this way.

Last season, Strasburg had Tommy John surgery.  It takes about a year to recover.  Pitcher’s arms are incredibly valuable, and yet they are also incredibly volatile.  Some look at Mark Prior as a cautionary tale.  He was dominant, but the belief was that he threw too many innings to soon and it ended up derailing what looked to be a promising career.  However, we don’t know for sure that the innings caused his decline, as many coaches, players and commentators have talked about his awful mechanics on the mound and attribute his decline to that.  But since then, pitchers have been more coddled than new born babies.  Anytime a pitcher is drafted in the early rounds, he is on a strict pitch count and innings limit through the minors and into the early years of his career.  In addition, talented high school and college pitchers are shutdown in the middle of seasons at times, to protect their pitching future.  No pitcher was handled more carefully than Strasburg in the minors, yet he still blew an elbow ligament, and had to have Tommy John surgery.  This just proves that there is nothing you can do.  No matter how careful you are, things happen and pitchers are going to get hurt.  They are doing an unnatural thing that arms are never meant to do.  Some can take it better than others.  Nolan Ryan believes that coddling pitchers is a mistake.  There were pitchers in the Rangers system that had never made it into the 7^th inning by the time they got called up.  He put an end to that and focused on strengthening arms by slowly adding innings.  It’s been met with as much success as the shutdown approach.  My point isn’t to claim one way is better, just to point out that no one way works.  If there were a way to protect pitchers that was consistently effective, it would be done by every team.  There is no method.

That brings us back to Strasburg.  The Nationals have been extremely cautious with him.  They are hoping he will be dominant and help them win games and make it to the playoffs.  Well fast-forward to 2012…and that’s exactly what he’s done.  The goal is to win a World Series.  So shutting down your ace for the most important part of the season, where you are actually close to achieving that goal seems counter-intuitive to even the most casual baseball fan.  The Nationals claim that they have a lot of science to back this up.  Fine.  I believe them.  But none of it can be that conclusive.  They claim that everyone else has 10% of the info that they have.  Fine, but what’s the other 90%?  Why won’t they share this information?  Perhaps people would get off their back a bit if they did share.  Why not shut him down in August, give him a few September starts to get back into it, and have him for the postseason?  That makes the most sense to me.  They claim they did the same thing with Jordan Zimmerman last season, and no one seemed to question the decision.  Well with all due respect, Jordan Zimmerman is no Stephen Strasburg.  And, even more obviously, THE NATIONALS WEREN’T IN THE PLAYOFF HUNT LAST YEAR!!!!

I understand being careful.  And I get that they want to contend for the long-term, not just this year.  But the fact is, no matter how talented your team is, you can’t be sure you’ll be in the playoffs each year.  Ask the Yankees.  They put together the best team money can buy, and they only get to the first round...though they’ve missed the playoffs entirely recently.  Washington doesn’t have nearly as much financial freedom as the Bronx Bombers, but they are still following through with this plan.  What if they shut him down this season, lose in the playoffs and never make it back?  What if injuries befall them and they lose their window of opportunity?  What if they win the World Series this year, and Strasburg never makes it back!!??

The fact is, the Nationals are being careful.  You can’t fault them for that.  But they had other options available to them, besides the one where they shut down their best pitcher for the playoffs.  Any other option has to be considered the better one.  And in addition to the decision, which doesn’t seem smart, their resistance to sharing their thinking or information makes them seem paranoid at best and petulant at worst.  It’s like they came to a decision, and when everyone came out and said there was a better way, they claim that their way is the best because they know something we don’t.  Yet they refuse to share that info.  It makes no sense.  They owe their fans an explanation.  They owe the team an explanation.  They owed Strasburg an explanation, and finally gave it to him earlier this week.  That’s right.   Despite saying that they were going to shut him down all season they didn’t have a conversation with him until September.  What are they doing in Washington?  No one can be sure that this will help keep Strasburg safe.  But the one thing we can be sure about…this decision will make the Nationals a less formidable team just in time to play the most formidable teams in their league in the most important games in Washington Nationals history. 

Newest Member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance

Well friends, I’ve got some exciting news.  I have been accepted as the newest member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.  I’m excited to be a part of the Alliance, and love their site.  The other members have some great blogs that give me plenty of inspiration to keep going.  I suggest everyone check it out.  I’ve copied the website below:

http://baseballbloggersalliance.wordpress.com/

If you go to the Membership tab, scroll down to the “General” blog category and scroll to the bottom of that section, you will see my blog.  You can click on it and it will take you directly to this page.  When I last looked it was the second to last blog listed in the General Blog section.  They don’t have my Facebook page up yet, but I’ve sent them the information and I’m sure they’ll get it up soon.

So now, the next post I put up will be my first (other than this one) as an official member of the BBA.  I encourage everyone to go on the site and take a look at the blogs available.  There is a blog for your favorite team (often multiple blogs for some teams) as well as blogs dealing with Fantasy Baseball, General Baseball Topics (like this one) and Baseball History.  There’s some great stuff there and I’m proud to be a part of this organization.

Please keep reading as I continue to add posts to my blog and look around the site for other baseball topics that will be sure to interest you.  Let’s play ball!