2021 awards thread

Never mind, found it--Cole.

it was close but the NL got the cy young right (Burnes)

closest in NL voting history actually!

Geez, forgot all about MVPs...Ohtani and Vlad almost went 1-2 unanimously (one third for Vlad)--has that ever happened before? Another oddity, I'm guessing, is that Brandon Crawford got four first-place votes but only finished fourth (more firsts than third-place Tatis). Harper was headed for the HOF anyway, but this probably clinches it.

Posey, the (famous) catcher and team leader on a 107-win team, and having a very good season, got all of 1 point--weird.

i mean, Crawford was hands down the most valuable guy on the team.

No question, but I bet if you studied catchers having comparable seasons on comparable teams, you'd be looking at lots of MVP support--more than one 10th-place vote, for sure.

Well, maybe not. Zunino for the Rays and Will Smith for the Dodgers had comparable seasons in terms of bWAR, and their teams also won 100 games. Zunino got the same 1 point, Smith was shut out. (I suppose I'd expect more because of Posey's name recognition and stature.)

Tip O’Neill Award to Vlad--eight more and he'll tie Larry Walker (Votto has seven).

https://baseballhalloffame.ca/james-tip-oneill-award/

damn, tyler o'neill picked the wrong time to become a good canadian baseball player! you'd think he would have been a shoe-in for the T O'Neill award

The Paul O'Neill Award, of course, was given annually to the player or manager who gave the best performance in a Seinfeld episode. Beside O'Neill himself, previous winners included Keith Hernandez, Danny Tartabull, and Buck Showalter.

i never saw the buck showalter episode! i think i saw the rest, somehow, in real time on thursday night on NBC when they aired.

god, 25 years ago was very different

He's good! "All of a sudden there's a problem with Tartabull's swing..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-9ls-ugums

(Showalter's line needs context from earlier in the episode.)

I was wondering if Fergie Jenkins would have won 11 or 12 of those Tip O'Neills in a row--from '67 to '79, possibly--but he definitely would have lost to John Hiller in '73; Fergie was atypically mediocre, and Hiller had one of the greatest relief seasons ever (7.9 bWAR). Jenkins had other so-so years near the end of that run, but I don't know if there was anyone else around to beat him. Terry Puhl might have won in '79.

Rob Butler won in 1993 -- with a 97 OPS+ in 56 PA with the Blue Jays? Slow year.

I know it's early, and there are five or six strong candidates right now, but guy on this FB group posted an interesting question:

Yankees & Angels make the postseason - Aaron Judge breaks Maris' AL HR record of 61 - Shohei Ohtani hits 35/40 HR, 100 RBI - and pitching wins 13 or so games with about a 3.00 ERA - Who wins the AL MVP award??

Put the post-season bit aside...the rest sounds plausible. They'd probably also be within a game or so in WAR (Judge leads by a half-game right now).

Guessing Judge, handily, because a) Trout would take many votes from Ohtani; b) the historical novelty of Ohtani would have subsided somewhat; and c) maybe there's a feeling they still owe Judge one from 2017.

i don't want to alarm you, clem, but ohtani is about even with judge in fWAR and has blown past him in bWAR

also i'm not sure the historical novelty of a legit cy young candidate hitting 30 homers and driving in 100 runs is going to subside very soon

(he's not likely to *win* the cy because he probably won't pitch enough innings -- right now he's not even qualified -- but at the moment he's top-four in the AL in both pitcher WARs anyway)

He's really coming on, I know. I'd still put my money on Judge, though--as we know, just in general MVP voters like the novelty of voting for someone different, and Judge may have a team that wins 110 games on his side.

Another oddity that I think will benefit Judge. The Yankees are where they are primarily because of across-the-board starting-pitching depth: all five guys are having good seasons, thought I doubt any one stands out enough to garner MVP support (maybe Cortes). Offensively, Judge dominates the lineup--I can't see another everyday player right now who would take votes away from him. Depending how the rest of the year goes, he could very well be the highest Yankee listed on every single ballot, which if they win 105-110 games, would probably mostly mean firsts with a few seconds mixed in.