Last Week in Baseball! – Midseason Awards

If you are like us, then you grew up loving “This Week in Baseball” with Mell Allen.  Here at WCT, we have “Last Week in Baseball!”  Please don’t sue us FOX!

We think that midseason awards are cliche and meaningless, but our job has taken us out of town and we’re blogging from a hotel room that doesn’t really inspire creativity.  So lets hand out some hardware!

American League

MVP – Magglio Ordonez, DET – we know that Alex Rodriguez has been the better player so far this year (arguably), but when there is a close race, MVP awards usually go to the guy who is on the better team.  Detroit has scored the most runs in the league, and they are looking like they will hopefully at least be the AL wild card team, while the Yankees have been under .500 for most of the season.  As a result, we give the nod to Ordonez.

Cy Young – Josh Beckett, BOS – this is probably the toughest award of all of them.  This could have easily gone to Santana, Verlander, Haren, Lackey, Sabathia, or Bonderman.  We went with Beckett because he has the best combination of record, ERA, and team success.

Rookie of the Year – Daisuke Matsuzaka, BOS – if you are going to write us to complain about our lack of respect for the Japanese leagues for calling Matsuzaka a “rookie,” save it.  This is his first year in the Major Leagues therefore he is a rookie.  And incidently, any league that can be dominated by Tuffy Rhodes, or name Benny Agbayani MVP, or allow Hideki Matsui to hit 50 home runs in a season, is not on the same level as these Major Leagues.

National League

MVP – Jose Reyes, NYM – another tough one.  Could have easily gone with Matt Holliday, or Prince Fielder, or even (believe it or not) Barry Bonds and his Major League leading 1.101 OPS!  But want to get at least one of our pre-season picks right in each league, so we’re going with Reyes.

Cy Young – Brad Penny, LAD – Penny is neck-and-neck with Peavy in our book, but we give the nod to Penny because he has a better record, and we think the Dodgers will eventually overtake the Padres.

Rookie of the Year – Hunter Pence, HOU – easiest one on the board, as this guy has been a stud so far.  And if the ‘stros weren’t such a joke, he would actually be right in the middle of the MVP race.

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Its our blog dammit, so we are going to talk about our favorite team every week – ugh. If you wanted to know why we weren’t exactly raving about the first-half performance of the 52-36 Indians so far, you need only look at this past weekend in Toronto.  On Friday they hit and couldn’t pitch, on Sunday they pitched and couldn’t hit.  As a result, they are now alone in second place behind the Tigers, who look like they may not lose another game this year.  Its getting to the point that Indians fans now have to cheer against, not only the Tigers, but the Mariners, A’s, and (gasp!) Yankees, lest they be caught in the wild card standings.  This team has to be more consistent in second half, and that means certain people have to step the F up and start playing up to their capabilities.