A Great Signing For The Dominican Republic

Ah, the beauty of small sample sizes: Tony Batista, Carribean Series MVP.

The 2006 Triple Steal Awards

Okay, before the playoffs get going and people really start debating the awards, here are the Triple Steal staff's awards for the 2006 season. We each voted for a top five for MVP's (five points for #1, four for #2, etc.), and top three for everything else (three points for #1, etc.). Here we go:

AL Manager of the Year: Jim Leyland (7 points)
Ron Gardenhire (6), Joe Torre (5)

Ross: "The Tigers weren't supposed to be anywhere near the playoff picture."
Warren: "Gardenhire at least eventually figured out which of his hitters were terrible (Tony Batista)."
Sully: "I think Leyland is over-rated, but nobody else stood out. I hate this award."

NL Manager of the Year: Joe Girardi (8 points)
Willie Randolph (4), Grady Little (4), Jerry Narron (2)

Ross: "The Mets put the Braves away early. Something no team has done in a long time. Randolph deserves the award."
Warren: " Narron did pretty (well) for a team with not a lot of good players, and for a GM that traded away half of the good ones."

AL Rookie of the Year: Francisco Liriano (6 points)
Justin Verlander (5), Jonathan Papelbon (4), Jered Weaver (3)

Sully: "I hate excluding Verlander."
Warren: "I hate leaving off Liriano."
Ross: "I feel horrible leaving Weaver off."

NL Rookie of the Year: Hanley Ramirez (8 points)
Ryan Zimmerman (4), Clay Hensley (4), Josh Johnson (1), Dan Uggla (1)

Warren: "Can I give an award to a sub-.500 pitcher (Hensley)? Sure I can!"
Ross: "This is not the American League."

AL Hank Aaron Award: Travis Hafner (7 points)
David Ortiz (6), Manny Ramirez (3), Jermaine Dye (2)

Ross: "If Manny batted in front of Ortiz instead of the other way around, Manny would win the Triple Crown."
Sully: "I'm probably short-changing Manny (left off ballot), but he quit on the team in August, so screw him."

NL Hank Aaron Award: Albert Pujols (9 points)
Ryan Howard (6), Miguel Cabrera (2), Lance Berkman (1)

Ross: "Pujols is the best hitter."
Sully: "Pretty self-explanatory."

AL Cy Young Award: Johan Santana (9 points)
Roy Halladay (6), Joe Nathan (1), Chien-Ming Wang (1), Barry Zito (1)

Warren: "Justin Verlander just misses the cut because he played in front of a great defense."
Ross: "Wang gets my third place vote because he had a ballooned ERA from early in the season when he couldn't pitch with men on base, since he figured it out, he's been as good as any pitcher outside Johan Santana."
Sully: "I don't usually like voting for closers, but... Nathan was pretty nasty, especially in the second half."

NL Cy Young Award: Roy Oswalt (6 points)
Bronson Arroyo (3), Trevor Hoffman (3), Brandon Webb (3), John Smoltz (2), Chris Carpenter (1)

Sully: " This was Webb's award until (Sunday's game). Too bad - they're pretty close."
Warren: "My semi-crazy choice... Arroyo led the league in innings pitched and had the 4th best ERA in front of a hideous defense. He's a flyball pitcher that had Adam Dunn and the remains of Ken Griffey, Jr. in the outfield. He's lucky they caught anything."
Ross: "This is just as much a career achievement award vote for Hoffman as anything... but what better year to do something like that when not a single starter in that league was able to pull off more than 16 wins against not even that good of competition."

AL MVP: Derek Jeter (15 points)
Johan Santana (11), Joe Mauer (5), David Ortiz (5), Travis Hafner (4), Grady Sizemore (3), Jermaine Dye (1), Justin Morneau(1)

Ross: "Yes, I have 3 Twins in the top 5, however, I also didn't think that the Twins would finish ahead of either the White Sox or Indians, not to mention pulling out the division from the Tigers."
Warren: "I don't understand all the hype for Morneau, and I think he's clearly the #3 player on the team (and maybe #4 if Liriano hadn't gotten hurt). Sizemore had a great, mostly unnoticed season."

NL MVP: Albert Pujols (14 points)
Ryan Howard (12), Carlos Beltran (8), Lance Berkman (5), Miguel Cabrera (3), Jose Reyes (2), Chase Utley (1)

Warren: "For some reason, Beltran has been getting very little love, especially
compared to Ryan Howard. I think Beltran was the MVP until a subpar September, and I think you could argue that given the Mets' big lead, his September performance shouldn't matter all that much."
Sully: "I wanted to vote for Ryan Howard. I really did. But (Pujols) was just better in every single stat except home runs and RBI, he's better defensively, he strikes out about 70% less often... there's just no way I could vote against Pujols."
Ross: "The Cardinals almost collapsed down the stretch, and the Phillies, after raising the white flag on July 31st, almost made it because the power display Howard put on."

The Twins' surge

The Twins on 6/18: 34-34, 11 games out of the division, 9.5 games out of the wild card
The Twins on 6/19: Released 3B Tony Batista
The Twins on 7/25: 57-41, 9.5 games out of the division, 2 games out of the wild card

You could say they should have had Liriano in the rotation all season, but I think we all know the real reason that it's all coming together now...

So Long, Tony

Tony Batista has been designated for assignment.

His final line: .236/.303/.388. He was on pace for 15 HR and 63 RBI in 149 games.

At least I have Ross on record making a stupid prediction ("Tony Batista was an extremely smart move"), so that when I get ridiculed for my "four A's pitchers will win 15 games" prediction I have something to fire back with.

WPA update

So I've been checking on the WPA scores as the season has gone on (FanGraphs now has updated season totals for every team and player), and I have to say, they're pretty interesting. It's kind of a cross between straight production and "clutch" performance; a lot of it is pretty much what you'd expect, but there are some surprises.

I should point out that the numbers don't include fielding, and relievers in general have higher swings than starters, since in the late innings, the likelihood of winning or losing is already pretty high.

Mets
Leading starter: Tom Glavine (151.8% in 7 starts, 21.7% per start). So for each of Glavine's starts, he increases the chance that the Mets will win by almost 22%.

Leading reliever: Duaner Sanchez (208.8% in 15 appearances, 13.9% per appearance).

Leading hitter: Carlos Delgado (133.0% in 30 games, 4.4% per game).

Yankees
Leading starter: Mike Mussina (105.7% in 7 starts, 15.1% per start).

Leading reliever: Kyle Farnsworth (61.8% in 14 appearances, 4.4% per appearance).

Leading hitter: Derek Jeter (150.6% in 29 games, 5.2% per game).
Very close second: Jason Giambi (149.4% in 28 games, 5.3% per game).

Giambi's raw stats have been far superior to Jeter's, obviously, so this is some measure of proof that Jeter is as "clutch" as people say, or at least he has been this year.

Red Sox
Leading starter: Curt Schilling (97.6% in 7 starts, 13.9% per start).

Leading reliever: Jonathan Papelbon (137.4% in 17 appearances, 8.1% per appearance).

Leading hitter: Manny Ramirez (124.2% in 31 games, 4.0% per game).

Manny is way ahead of Ortiz's 1.5% per game, which surprised me. The shifts have been hurting him, but not that much. Manny's just been far more important than I thought.

Other players of interest
Albert Pujols (322.0%/31 G = 10.4%!!!!!)
Barry Bonds (135.9%/26 G = 5.2%)
Chris Shelton (36.8%/32 G = 1.2%)
Alfonso Soriano (34.5%/32 G = 1.1%)
Ichiro Suzuki (-43.1%/33 G = -1.3%)
Tony Batista (-79.7%/27 G = -3.0%)

Edit:
Jaret Wright (-18.7/3 G = -6.2%) - this is just his starts, not his relief appearance
Jose Lima (-22.8%/1 G = -22.8%)