The Futility Infielder

Here's a composite ballot from two different places I submitted my choices for this year's awards, the Internet Baseball Awards and the Internet Baseball Writers Association. The IBA mirrors the Baseball Writers of America Association voting except that voters are allowed to go five deep in the Cy Young voting. The IBWA voting uses "Player of the Year" for MVP awards, "Pitcher of the Year" for the Cy, "Debut of the Year" for Rookie of the Year, and includes an "Executive of the Year" category as well. I made a couple of minor tweaks between voting for the two, but I won't bore you with them; this stands as my definitive ballot.

A few caveats: I'm of the mind playing for a team that makes the postseason isn't a requirement in the MVP voting but playing for a contender is almost certainly one, though I do think that key players in a Great Leap Forward are worthy of consideration. And while that isn't necessarily a requirement for the other awards, it does help some of the candidates. I also tend to leave pitchers off of the MVP ballots just because I don't have a problem finding ten worthy hitters to consider. Lastly, postseason performance was not a factor in these rankings.

NL MVP 1. Barry Bonds 2. Adrian Beltre 3. Albert Pujols 4. Jim Edmonds 5. Scott Rolen 6. J.D. Drew 7. Lance Berkman 8. Carlos Beltran 9. Mark Loretta 10. Bobby Abreu.
Though I would have loved to cast my ballot for Beltre, there really is no rational argument for anybody but Bonds for this award. Beltran's case based on his performance in both leagues. Loretta, a former futility infielder, had perhaps the most surprising season of anybody here. And while I wanted to include Adam Dunn for his fine season as well as his smashing through the 189 strikeout barrier, there were too many other good candidates to leave off.

AL MVP 1. Gary Sheffield 2. Vlad Guerrero 3. Manny Ramirez 4. Miguel Tejada 5. Carlos Guillen 6. Alex Rodriguez 7. David Ortiz 8. Ichiro Suzuki 9. Hideki Matsui 10. Melvin Mora.
I'll be accused of Yankee bias here, but so what. I watched Sheffield play well over 100 times and was never less than amazed at how fierce a hitter he is and how admirably he fought through injuries which would have felled a lesser player. Vlad's late-season showing was the key to the Angels' beating out the A's in the AL West, and he'll be a deserving winner if he gets the award (he won the IBA vote). Guillen might have placed in the top three had he not torn his ACL late in the season. Matsui was perhaps the biggest surprise on the Yankees, doubling his homers and raising his OPS by 125 points. And it gives me great pleasure to reserve a spot on my ballot for last year's Futility Infielder of the Year, Melvin Mora.

NL Cy Young 1. Randy Johnson 2. Carlos Zambrano 3. Ben Sheets 4. Roger Clemens 5. Eric Gagne. In a crowded field, I tuned out the gaudy W-L totals of Clemens in favor of Johnson's amazing season with a craptacular Diamondbacks team and gave some love to a couple of pitchers who really surprised in Zambrano and Sheets.

AL Cy Young 1. Johan Santana 2. Curt Schilling 3. Mariano Rivera 4. Brad Radke 5. Jake Westbrook
Johan by a landslide in a much less crowded field than the NL, but I've got no room for Pedro here with that 3.90 ERA and late-season collapse. And while there's no room for regrets over the David Justice trade since it brought a World Championship, Jake Westbrook would have really been a shot in the arm for a decimated Yankee rotation that overtaxed its top relievers for too long.

NL Rookie of the Year 1. Khalil Greene 2. Jason Bay 3. Akinori Otsuka.
The Padres come through with two out of three spots here. Greene had a fantastic second half (.891 OPS) and his late-season injury was the team's kiss of death in the Wild Card race.

AL Rookie of the Year 1. Zack Greinke 2. Justin Duchscherer 3. Bobby Crosby
Lew Ford would have been my top choice by a mile, but apparently he had too many days on the big-league roster (though not too many at-bats) to qualify. Greinke's not a bad choice, as it is. And I could have done without Crosby, whose season I see as doing more to prevent the A's from making the playoffs than to help them.

NL Manager of the Year 1. Jim Tracy 2. Tony LaRussa 3. Bobby Cox
I'm just going to keep voting for Tracy until he finally wins the damn thing. With the surprising Dodgers taking the NL West, he bloody well ought to. And though LaRussa's obsession with matchup minutae drives me nuts and sends me to change the channel during all those pitching changes, 105 wins does count for something.

AL Manager of the Year 1. Buck Showalter 2. Mike Scioscia 3. Alan Trammell
Showalter and Trammell both oversaw great leaps forward by their teams, Scioscia one helluva late season comeback. I gave the nod to Buck because nobody thought his team would stay alive right up to the final week of the season.

NL Executive of the Year 1. Paul DePodesta 2. Walt Jocketty 3. Kevin Towers
Though the Dodgers left the gate with a team that was more or less the design of a hamstrung Dan Evans, DePodesta did enough retooling on the fly to keep them atop the NL West. Forget the LoDuca/Penny trade, which blew up in his face, and the failed run at Randy Johnson; the Finley acquisition and the late-season remaking of the bullpen out of castoffs and rookies really made a difference. Jocketty's acquisition of Larry Walker was yet another brilliant in-season acquisition from a man who's done that quite often.

AL Executive of the Year 1. Theo Epstein 2. Mark Shapiro 3. Terry Ryan
A landslide for the boy wonder. From acquiring Turkey Schilling due to a Thanksgiving Day visit to snagging Orlando Cabrera in the jettisoning of Nomar, Theo's moves came up big (though I still think they should have signed John Olerud for free and gotten another body instead of trading for Doug Mienkiewicz). Shapiro's Indians team put a real scare into Minnesota for awhile, well ahead of schedule. And while I don't agree with some of the theories Ryan has used in building these Twins (the lack of OBP, the failure to convert the surplus of corner hitting studs into usable parts all the way around the diamond, and the resigning Shannon Stewart at the expense of two key members of last year's bullpen), the Nathan/Pierzynski trade looks brilliant in retrospect, and the team's patience with Santana finally paid off bigtime.