BBWAA Awards Week 2018
- Thread starter DeadlySplitter
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Good for him; he was quietly the best starter on the Mets for a few years, it's good that he's finally getting the recognition as the anchor of their WS-level rotation over the past few years (obv. not the past year or two with injuries)
I don't know that I've ever seen that level of unaminousity for the #1/2 positions (DeGrom was 29/30 in 1st place, and every ballot had DeGrom and Scherzer 1/2 or 2/1)
Normally, I don't really care all that much about the awards. It's nice when your favorites win and all that, gives us stuff to talk about.
But if Mookie doesn't win MVP, I am going to have an irrational and disproportionate reaction.
But if Mookie doesn't win MVP, I am going to have an irrational and disproportionate reaction.
Well-deserved for Snell. Cash should have won on transforming baseball grounds, even though all the revolutionary pitching mgmt stuff actually came from the front office.
I liked Cash for this. He basically invented the Opener role, which was a fascinating wrinkle this season. We saw Cora up close, and he was excellent.
But Melvin got a lot out of a so-so roster. Good choice.
Betts was the best player in baseball. All-world defensively, one of the best base stealers/runners in the league, and the best offensive player too. And he was the best player on the best team. He was, definitively, better than Trout this year. I cannot fathom a legitimate argument for anyone but Betts for AL MVP.
Is that common knowledge to Rays press and fans? I never heard that on MLBN or anywhere else. You often hear about day to day direction coming down from the front office to the manager, most recently and maybe the loudest about Dave Roberts in the World Series. I’ve never heard it admitted though from either end. Roberts wore it all himself (the questionable decisions).
Shouldn't we wait to see how widespread the "opener" and other variations of bullpen use become before we say what the Rays, Brewers and, yes, the Athletics did this year actually "transformed baseball"?
I am eagerly awaiting 6 p.m. as though it were a playoff game. I want to see who's in the room with Markus Lynn.
Who was pulling the strings on Roberts for all those decisions?
I think it’s pretty well understood that the Rays take a very collaborative approach to basically all baseball decision making, where the front office and the analytics department are intimately involved in everything. They’ve got analytics guys in uniform in the dugout all through spring training, even. Heavy shifting, fielders with notecards, third time through the order effect, throwing tons of change ups, lots of pre-planned rest days, lots of players playing multiple positions, whatever their new little insight or advantage is, it’s heavily researched. That’s just how they roll under Sternberg. I’m not saying Cash is some Art Howe type stooge, but a Rays manager doesn’t just decide on his own to do something totally new with a pitching rotation. The reason he got the job, and Maddon before him, is they bought into being part of that system and were willing to be the face of not doing things by the book.
They started experimenting with the whole bullpen games thing back in 2013 when Maddon was still there. Remember game 4 of the 2013 ALDS? They’ve been ramping up the shorter starts thing (3rd time thru the order effect) for a few years now and also moving more and more towards trying to get their best short relievers facing the other team’s best hitters, regardless of which inning it is. Opener was a natural evolution of those trends. All driven by analytics. Cash has discussed all that at various points, although they are obviously pretty tight-lipped about anything they think is proprietary.
Their most brilliant move has been throwing visiting teams off by making sure nobody is in the stadium.
I read that JBJ calls him Markus Lynn, and I thought that was neat. It seemed to me to be a sign of respect. However, if he prefers Mookie.... I'd like to ask him.
I do remember that Rays - Red Sox playoff game in which the Rays used nine pitchers, nobody for more than 2 innings. That was the clinching game, tight all the way, 3 - 1 final.
As for who was pulling the strings attached to marionette Roberts, Farhan Zaidi, I guess. If it did happen. As for the Red Sox, Dave Dombrowski and Alex Cora, one of the other or both, said that Dave advised Alex about player usage during the season, but never came down with instructions re lineups or anything like that. I believe Yankee folks around here have said that Boone gets more strong handed "advice' on how to run the team than Cora got. I guess it varies. One other team, I doubt if Bruce Bochy ever got strongarmed by Sabean or anyone else. JMO.
Yes, I've heard JBJ call him that. Not sure I'd seen the first part of this, from Wiki:
Betts's parents chose his name in part to form the initials MLB, matching those of Major League Baseball. He has attributed his nickname Mookie to his parents watching former NBA guard Mookie Blaylock play basketball shortly after Betts was born.
Ironic that his nickname is also the same as Mookie Wilson's, infamous (to the Sox) because of 1986, who will always be linked to Bill Buckner.
Oh yeah, Friedman. Coincidence, Jim Leyland was just on MLBN and he said when he and Dombrowski were working together, same thing I said above, that Dombrowski saw him (Leyland) most every day and there was discussion and advice but never any lineup direction.
The concept of "bullpen" games, particularly in the playoffs in a do-or-die situation, isn't really new. Maddon got a lot of the credit for that particular game, which is justifiable because he was trying to win the game any way he could and his bullpen was more reliable than his fourth starter. But it wasn't something he regularly practiced. His roster was set up to be deployed "traditionally".
The concept of using an "opener" and making "bullpen" games a regular part of the rotation comes down to roster construction more than anything, which comes from the front office. But ultimately, I think the execution is down to the manager...he's handed the groceries but it's up to him how they're cooked. Even if the concept came from the front office, Cash deserves credit for executing it so well...both in getting the pitchers to buy in and in choosing the right guys for the right spots day-to-day.
no, the NL was announced was just now. AL will be in about 30 minutes.
Yelich was nearly unanimous. One AZ person voted for deGrom first. https://bbwaa.com/18-nl-mvp/
https://bbwaa.com/18-nl-mvp-ballots/
Yelich was nearly unanimous. One AZ person voted for deGrom first. https://bbwaa.com/18-nl-mvp/
https://bbwaa.com/18-nl-mvp-ballots/
He looks like he’s going to his second job as a teaching assistant at a local college after this.
The fact that he is holding his new baby girl during this makes me love him more than I have ever loved any ballplayer before.
I had a feeling this would happen after some outcry over JD. All a 'finalist' means is taking the top 3 and drawing out the drama even longer. JD was actually very close to 3rd, also beating out "prepping for Eovaldi" Bregman by a lesser margin than 3rd to 4th.
full votes at https://bbwaa.com/18-al-mvp-ballots/
full votes at https://bbwaa.com/18-al-mvp-ballots/
Are we to assume the mother of the child is the young woman to the right of the MVP? I wish we could have seen the baby's face.
Answering my own question, another thread led me to MLB's Instagram page, where I see that she is.
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Way to go Mookie!
Mike Trout has been a regular for seven seasons now, and has finished first or second in the MVP voting for six of them, with the other being 2017 where he finished 4th. In each of his prior second place finishes he had a higher WAR than the winner, until this year when he got beat all around by Mookie. Unreal.
Mike Trout has been a regular for seven seasons now, and has finished first or second in the MVP voting for six of them, with the other being 2017 where he finished 4th. In each of his prior second place finishes he had a higher WAR than the winner, until this year when he got beat all around by Mookie. Unreal.
I am glad deGrom got a 1st place MVP vote. By many measures, he was the NL's best player this year and deserved more consideration for NL MVP.