Catching up on some stuff that’s been sitting on the proverbial desk for awhile. Yeah, it’s a little old, but so am I. Get over it:

Chris at Capitol Punishment examines the Nationals’ least clutch plays of the 2007 season.
Speaking of the Nats, Harper at Oleander and Morning Glories explains why Manny Acta didn’t get serious consideration for NL Manager of the Year.
Erik at Philliesflow wonders why Jimmy Rollins won the NL Silver Slugger at shortstop over Florida’s Hanley Ramirez. Remember, this is a Phillies blogger asking the question.
Will at Chop-n-Change looks at the best ever to play left field for …read more

Man, I had way too much coffee this morning. You could get a contact high just reading this.
Enough about me, how about the Manager of the Year awards? The good news is, the voters got one of ‘em right. The other one? Eh, it’s defensible.
You liked Colorado’s Clint Hurdle and Cleveland’s Eric Wedge (as did I). Neither of those teams was expected to do as well as they did this season.
The Indians you could kind of see coming, but they play in MLB’s toughest division. Wedge was the clear choice here.
In the National League, things were a little trickier. Bob …read more

Okay, I promise this is the last I’ll say on the subject. In case you somehow missed it, we’ve been running polls on all of MLB’s major postseason awards. Here is a list of links to all of our polls and who is leading as of this writing.

Award
Current Leader

AL MVP
Alex Rodriguez

NL MVP
Jimmy Rollins Matt Holliday

AL Cy Young
Josh Beckett

NL Cy Young
Jake Peavy

AL Rookie
Dustin Pedroia

NL Rookie
Troy Tulowitzki

AL Manager of the Year
Eric Wedge

NL Manager of the Year
Clint Hurdle

I’m not going to tell you which ones I think are wrong, but I will say that their names rhyme with Mimmy Mollins Ratt Rolliday and …read more

{democracy:26}

You thought I forgot. Go ahead, admit it. You noticed that we didn’t run a poll yesterday, and you thought that I’d forgotten about NL Manager of the Year.
Now, why would I do that?
Right, I wouldn’t. I also wouldn’t vote for anyone other than Clint Hurdle or Bob Melvin for this award. I suppose you could make a case for Charlie Manuel or Ned Yost, maybe Bud Black.
I kinda liked Willie Randolph before The Collapse (TM). Lou Piniella? Not so much for me. His bosses went out and bought the best team money could buy, and he barely managed to …read more

{democracy:25}

Happy Monday, and welcome to our latest poll. Manager of the Year is always a tricky one for me. What criteria should we use to determine the winner? If we look only at total victories, we ignore factors such as improvement from one season to the next. If we consider improvement from one season to the next, but overlook the fact that management spent an obscene amount of money to put itself in that position, we still miss a big part of the picture.

More Polls
Talk to me…

AL MVP
NL MVP
AL Cy Young
NL Cy Young
AL Rookie
NL Rookie

I usually try to balance overall …read more

Preseason Picks Revisited
The story so far:

AL West
AL Central
AL East

First off, I’d like to thank all the spammers for their excellent suggestions. Some pretty imaginative stuff, although much of it I fear is not physically possible. But really, what are we without ambition?
To the topic at hand. Here are my preseason predictions for the NL West, annotated for your amusement:

Diamondbacks – I expected them to be on top, but I figured it would be on the strength of their talented young hitters. Instead, pitching has carried the day in Phoenix. What a bullpen…
Padres – Not a bad showing from a team …read more

In the interest of accountability, I thought we’d start looking back at my preseason predictions. I’ll run one division a day and make a few comments where appropriate.
First off, the American League West:

Angels – They’ve won the division, as expected. The team from Anaheim still has a chance to finish with the best record in all of baseball; that’s good because I also picked the Angels to win the World Series.
Rangers – What was I thinking? Probably that their offense couldn’t be too bad in that park. Sammy Sosa is a feel-good story. Well, sort of… I guess. The rotation …read more

Most of the pennant races became clearer over the weekend. Boston clinched a playoff spot, although whether it will be as AL East champion or AL wild card representative is yet to be determined. After winning on Sunday, the Yankees find themselves 1 1/2 games back of the Red Sox with seven to play, which is remarkable given that they’ve been as many as 14 1/2 games out of first place this year and had a losing record (42-43) as late as July 7. Since then, New York has the best record in baseball (46-22), and it’s not even close …read more