- For about a week we all seemed convinced that, yes, Zack would snag the Cy Young Award. Then CC Sabathia won his 16th game. Then Roy Halladay threw a complete game one-hitter against the Yankees. Then the bizarre Rivera for Cy Young campaign began. All Zack did tonight was go eight innings, allowing one unearned run behind eight strikeouts.
- Then again, the question needs to be asked: why do we care about these awards anymore? As Dave Cameron writes:
With the invention of the internet (thanks Al!), we don’t need to look back through a list of MVP awards to remember who was good way back when. We have baseball-reference for that. History isn’t recorded in trophies, but in data and stories, and we now have the capability to store a massive amount of both. No matter who wins the AL MVP award this season, we’re going to have a ridiculous amount of information about what happened on the field in 2009, and we’ll be able to show our kids and their kids just how much fun it was to watch Joe Mauer play baseball. The history of the game, as told by us, won’t be changed one iota by how the BBWAA votes in six weeks.
If they want to think that Teixeira was the most important player to his team in the league this year, that’s fine. Most of us probably disagree, and we’re under no obligation to report that as any kind of factual statement. I’ll be telling people that Mauer was the most valuable player in the American League for 2009, and I’ve got a mountain of information to back it up. How other people view the definition of the word value has no real world impact on me.
- I think another Royal was just stranded.
- Yabuta isn't a good pitcher.
- Jamey Wright isn't a good pitcher.
- Royals lose again.