I’m behind on my awards
Sorry about that. I had a prior commitment involving playing video games and putting it off. But I’m back now, baby!
The Rookies of the Year involved one surprising but excellent choice, and one surprising but really weird choice. Let’s start with the NL, since it’s older, and that means it’s more likely to die before I’m done writing this thing.
The NL Rookie of the Year was San Fransisco’s own Buster Posey, who, in an ironic turn of events, placed second in the Gayest Rookie Name of the Year voting to his own teammate, Madison Bumgarner. Posey would have been my choice, but I honestly expected Jason Heyward to win it. Heyward was probably the better hitter — Posey has a 13-point advantage in OPS, but this is a great example of how OPS doesn’t tell the entire story of a hitter. Posey’s advantage is in SLG, .505 to .456. That is non-trivial. But Heyward leads in OBP .393 to .357, and that’s considerably more important than SLG, all things considered.
WAR tells us a Heyward-favorable story, 4.4 to 3.0, which seems as though it should slam the door on Posey. But be careful: WAR is a counting stat, and Heyward played 34 more games. That’s about 4/3 as many games, which closes the WAR gap pretty handily.
But, wait, Darien, I imagine you saying: isn’t playing time really, really important? Aren’t you always going on about how players who play more games are more valuable players and should be treated accordingly? Well, yes. Yes I am. And if you’re running for MVP or Cy Young or Manager of the Year or the Rolaids thing or President of God or whatever, it’s an important consideration. But the Rookie of the Year, to my mind, is materially different, because rookies have no control over their playing time, really. Sometimes, as in the case of Heyward, they’ll make the team right out of spring training. Other times, the team will decide to keep its hot rookies in AAA (usually for arbitration-clock reasons) and let Bengie Molina stink things up for a few months so he can get a World Series ring anyhow. It’s not clear to me that Posey should be penalised because the Giants didn’t call him up until May 29. This still counts as his rookie year, after all.
So why would I break in favour of Posey? Well, the two players are both excellent, and very very similar in value per game played. The main reason I choose Posey is that he’s a catcher, and, quite frankly, I find it more impressive for a young player to break in as a catcher than as a right fielder. Posey had to handle the added difficulty of managing his pitching staff, which, while not something that’s as important as, say, hitting and throwing and catching, is certainly a thing that exists. Posey had to cope with the strain of squatting for nine innings night after night after night. And he still managed to hit exactly as many home runs as Jason Heyward, but in 34 fewer games. That’s good stuff. Posey-chu, I choose you! Good on you, sportswriters.
The AL ROY is kind of a weird choice, though. Neftali Feliz was fine, I guess, but there were like at least three better choices. To be fair, the AL rookie class was a lot weaker than the NL rookie class this year; the AL didn’t exactly have any Evan Longorias this year. Well, I mean, unless you count Evan Longoria. Which, as far as rookies are concerned, you should not; he is clearly not a rookie, as you can tell from the size of his paycheques.
Where was I? Ah yes: the sex. Feliz was fine and dandy — a 2.4 WAR rookie relief pitcher isn’t something to be sneezed at. But Austin Jackson and Danny Valencia were better by WAR. Never mind that. That’s not what I came here to talk about. I came to talk about Carlos Santana.
Carlos Santana was fucking jobbed by the Indians this year. They didn’t call him up until June 11th, and he went down on August 2nd with a knee explosion after the Red Sox’ Ryan Kalish bulldozed him at the plate. That was it for his season. In that less-than-two-months period, Carlos Santana did this: .260 / .401 / .467 / .868. His OPS+ was 144. He played league-average defense at catcher. He was worth 2.2 WAR in those 46 games — very nearly as many as Feliz, Jackson, and Valencia earned in full seasons. If the Indians hadn’t held him in the minors until the middle of goddamn June, this would be his award, no question.
The pisser is that he accumulated just enough roster time that this will count as his rookie year. I might have voted for him anyhow; he was stunningly brilliant in those 46 games, and almost as valuable overall as any other member of the class regardless. He probably deserved at least one vote. Were there no Cleveland homers to stick him on the ballot?
Enough about rooks. Let’s talk about old men now. I’m sure you’ve heard the news: God exists! He is real, and His love for us is everlasting. We know this because Dusty Baker-Stupid did not win the NL Manager of the Year, and that clearly is the work of a loving God. Bud Black of the high-lariously overachieving San Diego Dads beat him by one point. One point! I love that shit. Suck it hard, Dusty! You go to hell and you die.
Speaking of Mark Prior, his new boss R. Washington didn’t win his league’s award either. Perpetually confused Twinkies manager R. Gardenhire won it by a big chunk, which seems weird to me. Did all those voters just forget which Ron they wanted to pick? What the hell did Ron Gardenhire do, exactly? He took the best team in baseball and led them to a good-but-not-great 94 wins, and managed to edge out a team of old people who can’t hit run by a man whose greatest ambition in life is to make less sense than the Iron Shiek for the top spot in baseball’s stupidest division. Good work, Gardy! Grats on winning the AL central. Which you do every year. Because your team is awesome and the rest of those teams are bad.
Meanwhile, R. Washington at least managed a franchise that’s notorious for losing all the time and went to the World Series with them. I know we’re not allowed to count the stuff that happens during the playoffs, but you’d think he’d get credit for getting the Rangers to the playoffs in the first place. Or for doing lots of cocaine. Or for having a slugger who did lots of cocaine. Or, at the very least, a 300-year-old owner who threw out the first pitch in World Series game 3 and hurled a 65mph strike. Doesn’t R. Washington get any credit for that??
If you can’t tell, I don’t have any substantive arguments about the Manager of the Year. It’s a stupid award, and it doesn’t really have any criteria, and managers don’t really do anything that’s objectively valuable. But I do think it’s weird weird weird that Gardy won and not Washington.
I’ll cover Cy Youngs tomorrow, after the AL is announced. Are you ready for my shocking twist ending to the NL Cy Young argument? You won’t be able to handle the flavour!
