The American League ‘Bloggers
Vote’ Awards for week 7 have been published over at Baseball Happenings. As
a reminder from the National League recap, the awards are based on the philosophy
of if the season ended today. Keep in mind today
was up until, but not including, May 19th.
Here is how I voted:
Kevin
Youkilis
Josh
Hamilton
Cliff
Lee
Youkilis is having the best season in the American League. He
is raking for a winning team and doing so with little to no attention. Youk is
currently first in Win Shares Above Bench (WSAB) and second in Value Over
Replacement Player (VORP). In addition to being a key contributor for the
American Leagues best team, Youk is
again providing outstanding defensive play, where he leads all first basemen in
defensive win shares.
Josh Hamilton is having an outstanding season in his own
right. He is legitimately a contender for the triple crown and has shown little
signs of slowing down. Additionally, outside of his RBI’s, his statistics are
legit (although the weekly MVP voter in my does not care about legitimacy). However,
What is a bad thing and what is surprising is how few votes and how little respect Cliff Lee received. Sitting with an identical WSAB as Youkilis and Hamilton, Lee is far and away the best pitcher in the American League. Could anyone imagine ignoring his statistics at the end of 2008 if he was sitting with an ERA under 1.50 while winning around 24 games?
AL Cy Young
Cliff Lee
Zach
Greinke
Joakim
Soria
As mentioned, Lee has far and away been the best pitcher in
the American League, in fact, there is very little overall competition for this
given how well Lee has been pitching. What is most disturbing is that one voter
actually left Lee off his list altogether. This, however, is not nearly as
devastating as the fact that this same voter decided on C.C.
Sabathia over Lee.
Greinke has had an incredible turnaround for his career and
is definitely one of the most impressive baseball stories in recent years. I
remember being impressed with Greinke out of the bullpen last season, and he
has definitely carried that success over to the rotation. The issue with
Greinke is that his stats are far from sustainable and he does not possess the typical Cy Young stats (ie wins and
strikeouts).
Greinke’s teammate Joakim Soria is absolutely dominating the
American League and has been absolutely unhittable. The biggest thing holding
Soria back however, is the fact that he plays for the Royals and will struggle
to lead the league in saves. If I could have this vote again, I may have picked
Roy
Halladay instead.
AL ROY
Jacoby
Ellsbury
Aaron
Laffey
Ben
Francisco
Ellsbury is a one man show among American League rookies to
this point. His plate discipline and walk rate are remarkable for a player of
his age and experience. What is also remarkable is that there are voters who
figured that a rookie on pace for 60 steals is not worthy of winning this
award.
Aaron Laffey is tied for the lead in VORP among American
League rookie pitchers. Apparently doing that only merits 3 of a possible 27
votes. Let us also consider that the pitcher Laffey is tied with has an extra 4
starts under his belt. At this point, Laffey is pretty much the only one who is
poised to challenge Ellsbury for this award.
Ben Francisco makes the list because he plays for the Tribe.
He hasn’t done a whole lot to deserve this placement on the list and was
deservedly left off of everyone else’s list. He is however, sitting at only 40%
of David
Murphy’s VORP despite collecting about 25% of the at bats.
In an interesting week of voting I find it surprising the players that are included at times and the players who are left off. The problem with doing that is this is not an ‘I told you so’ vote, any predictions made part way through the season is the equivalent of bandwagon jumping.