Linkmeister

Baseball awards

By popular demand (well, Peter's comment down here), here's your one-stop shop for the baseball awards for 2007. All the usual suspects are there: MVP for each league (AL: Alex Rodriguez, NL: Jimmy Rollins), Rookie of the Year for each league (Dustin Pedroia in the AL, Ryan Braun in the NL), Cy Young (C.C. Sabathia, AL; Jake Peavy, NL), and Manager of the Year (Cleveland's Eric Wedge and Arizona's Bob Melvin).

All the awards are subjective, of course. The MVP, Cy Young, ROY are voted on by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The Hank Aaron award (best offensive performer) is voted on by radio and tv broadcasters; Rodriguez won in the AL, Milwaukee's Prince Fielder won in the NL. The Roberto Clemente award for humanitarian efforts is voted on by a panel of baseball "dignitaries" including the commissioner and Clemente's widow; this year the fans had an opportunity to vote on the All Star Game ballot. Each team nominates one of its members for the award. This year's winner was the Astro's Craig Biggio.

There's a new one this year sponsored by Pepsi, which really means that the company looked around, thought "How do we get our name in a new place this year?" and suggested it to MLB. MLB, always willing to sell its product, said "Fine!" and thus the "MLB Clutch Performer" award was born. It's given to "the player who performed his best when the game was on the line", and this year's recipient was (Surprise!) A-Rod.

Posted by Linkmeister at November 20, 2007 09:58 AM | TrackBack