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July 15, 2003 Prospectus TodayMid-Season Awards
I say this every year, but only because the thought dominates my brain for 72 hours each July: I hate the All-Star break. Two days with no games sandwiched around an exhibition contest. Yuck. Anyway, here are my midseason awards ballots, which missed the deadline to be included in the BP staff balloting by a hair or dozen. If you're new to this column, welcome to my biases: I favor performance at up-the-middle positions, and I try to strip what a player has done from the context in which he did it as much as I can. AL MVP
Loaiza has truly been amazing, worth just shy of five wins in the White Sox first 94 games, which is a huge number. He stands out from the crowd of position players having good years. I can see the arguments against listing Donnelly, but he's allowed three runs all season long, generally protecting small leads in the eighth inning. The leverage of his innings is probably higher than any other pitcher in the game, and I had a hard time listing him even that far down. NL MVP
The rest of this ballot was easier to construct, given the agreement of EqA and VORP on most of these guys. That the Cardinals are even in a race is astounding given that they have four of the nine best players in the league. If Walt Jocketty gets them any help, the Cards will run away in the second half. AL Cy Young Hudson and Mulder are a wash; consider my vote a nod to the hard luck in which Hudson has pitched all year, and the likelihood that major media will look at the W column and think there's a big difference between the two. I fully expect that some Oakland Athletic will win the Cy Young Award this year, and who does will have as much to do with Miguel Tejada and Keith Foulke as with the pitchers themselves.NL Cy Young It's not an exciting group, as evidenced by the fact that two guys with less than 100 innings show up in the top five. Smoltz is the most likely of these pitchers to win the actual award because Brown and Schmidt will miss time to injuries, and Webb is going to regress some. Wood's control problems and lousy run support mean that he is unlikely to have the wins necessary to stand out.AL Rookie of the Year I really hate empty batting averages, but I can't find a way to squeeze Mark Teixeira onto the ballot ahead of Baldelli, who has a significant edge in defensive value. I think by the end of the year, though, Tex will be the best or second-best rookie--behind Matsui--in the league. Berroa has quietly had one heck of a season, and if Matsui hadn't played so much center field, I might have made Berroa my choice.NL Rookie of the Year Hee Seop Choi's injury, suffered in a collision with Kerry Wood, cost him three weeks of playing time. Dusty Baker's old-people fetish is costing him a lot more, and is what gets Seo onto the list. Willis has more and better press, but Webb has been the better pitcher, and tremendously important in the Diamondbacks' run to contention.
Joe Sheehan is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 0 comments have been left for this article.
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