Extremely Tight Year for Baseball Awards Races
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Sometimes I wish we could just do away with postseason awards, just because so many miss their point in varying ways. People arriving at contorted definitions of value that don’t really relate to what players do on the field are incredibly annoying, but then so are people who don’t realize that the awards would mean nothing if they were just given to the players with the best statistical value. The voting is meant to codify opinions about players, not to decide who gets a plaque for having the most win shares or the best park-adjusted ERA, and if it too often devolves into coronations of players with large numbers of RBI and wins, that doesn’t mean the solution is just to pick better statistics as the benchmark by which to judge value.
That aside, this is at least an interesting year for the awards races, as with one exception the races are all wide open. With last night’s rainout, it seemed as good a time as any to toss in two cents on several awards.
NATIONAL LEAGUE MVP
With apologies to Ryan Howard, Miguel Cabrera, and Lance Berkman, this is a two-horse race. The favorite, and defending champion, is the Cardinals’ Albert Pujols, who hit .331 BA/.431 OBA/.671 SLG, gathered a dozen or so truly memorable clutch hits, and more or less singlehandedly drove his team into the playoffs; your other real candidate is Carlos Beltran, who hit .275/.388/.594 while playing truly superb center field defense. In terms of strict value to their teams, these were by far the two best players in the league, and they’re closer than their batting numbers make it seem — Beltran played in a tougher environment for hitters, and it’s a lot harder to find a center fielder who hits nearly as well as he does than it is to find a first baseman who hits nearly as well as Pujols does.
Much as I’d like to construct a dishonest argument for Beltran, though, Pujols was simply better. He actually played a bit more than Beltran, and while he’s not the all-around player Beltran is, he’s a very good fielder, a smart baserunner, and the reigning best player in the game.
NATIONAL LEAGUE CY YOUNG
This is clearly the most amusing race, as by a quirk of the season no pitcher won more than 16 games, occasioning much outrage about how there are no good pitchers in the league and so forth. In truth there were at least six legitimate candidates — Brandon Webb, Roy Oswalt, John Smoltz, Chris Carpenter, and Bronson Arroyo — who had seasons as good as a typical Cy Young winner. Webb, who was five innings off the league lead and a tenth of a run behind the league leader despite pitching in a hitter-friendly park, probably offered the best combination of durability and effectiveness, though you need an electron microscope to tell the difference between his season and Oswalt’s.
AMERICAN LEAGUE MVP
This field really has something for everyone who wants to make every variety of argument, sound, hare-brained and in between. Derek Jeter offers batting average, fielding at a tough position, a fair amount of power, durability, speed, and leadership, after a fashion. Joe Mauer offers even more batting average and even better fielding at an even tougher position. David Ortiz is a living mockery of any argument that clutch hitting doesn’t exist. Then there’s Justin Morneau, who drove in a lot of runs.
The best player in the circuit, though, was Johan Santana. His 2.10 ERA in the final third of the season was the critical difference that drove the Twins to the top of the Central Division, especially as the Twins were reeling from the loss of Francisco Liriano. He led the league in ERA, strikeouts, innings pitched, and starts. It was a monster season, and in a year when no position player quite had one of those, it was enough for Santana to stake a claim as better than anyone else in the league.
AL ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
The American League certainly had a stunning crop of rookie pitchers this year. Jon Papelbon kept his ERA under 1.00, Francisco Liriano was the most effective starter in the league on a per-inning basis, and Jered Weaver wasn’t far behind him.The first two were injured, though, and Weaver was a mid-season callup, making Detroit rookie Justin Verlander, who pitched a full slate of games and ranked among the best starters in the league, look like an appealing choice. Who was best?
Really the choice is between Liriano and Papelbon. Verlander and Weaver would be easy picks most years, but the startling excellence of the first two just can’t be denied. Given the importance of his innings, Papelbon probably deserves MVP consideration even given his truncated season. One might think closers are generally overrated, but a closer who simply doesn’t give up runs (he allowed three through the first three months of the year) is about as valuable as anything in baseball. He deserves the prize, and it’s a real shame his shoulder problems are going to lead to a new role as a starter, where he’s more likely to be mundanely effective than to be dazzlingly brilliant. There’s always enough of the former to go around, and never enough of the latter.