With updates

The results of the Most Valuable Player vote in the American League should not have been a surprise to anyone. A-Rod ran away with the vote and picked up 26 first-place votes. Detroit’s Magglio Ordonez placed second with two first-place votes. Kinda surprised Maggs got any, because it’s not like the stats were all that debatable. Maggs had a great year, but A-Rod bested him in every way, traditional or sabre, plus he plays the infield.

But what’s that we see? A Grandy sighting? Yup! Curtis Granderson placed 10th, just behind former Tiger Carlos Pena. He had as high as a fourth-place vote. Placido Polanco even had an 8th and 10th place vote to his credit.

Two updates

The two Maggs voters were News’ Tom Gage and Oakland Press’ Jim Hawkins, who both basically said “if you saw Maggs’ season, you’d vote for him too.”

Here’s from Gage’s column on it.

I did it because I thought Ordonez was more valuable to his team than A-Rod was to his, but also for specific statistical reasons: such as the wide disparity between Ordonez’s batting average (.363-.314) and more so because Ordonez hit .429 with runners in scoring position compared to .333 by A-Rod.

… I think a 49-point difference in batting average and a 96-point difference in their averages with runners in scoring position, the clutch stat to home runs’ glamour, more than offset the obvious reasons to vote for A-Rod.

This obviously will have sabermetrically-minded folks cringing: batting average AND clutchability? But props to Gage for voicing why he did it.

Since we couldn’t write in Curtis Granderson for the All-Star Team, we have a chance to make up for it.

Grandy has been nominated for the Roberto Clemente award.

From the MLB voting form linked below:

Fans, along with a Blue Ribbon Panel, will decide who will be the 2007 Award winner based on their commitment to community and understanding of the value of helping others.

Voting is here.

I didn’t even know the News had a Sportsman of the Year, and then I got to this paragraph.

Henning: The Tigers manager helped steer a once-lost team to remarkable achievements in 2006, capped by a stunning trip to the World Series. His remarkable influence on 25 players, and the celebration it in turn sparked within Detroit’s baseball community, is why Leyland has been chosen as the first Detroit News Sportsman of the Year.

I’m trying to remember if it’s the Freep or the AP, I think the Freep, who generally does this sort of thing. Other than maybe a sympathetic shoutout to Steve Yzerman’s retirement, I can’t really think of anyone else I would substitute for Leyland. (And to be clear, I would not substitute Yzerman, but I could see that happening).

The Detroit Independent Baseball Scribes announced the winners of their second annual player awards. DIBS is a rapidly-expanding group of internet writers who follow the Tigers, and I was a voter this year.

Shortstop Carlos Guillen was named the DIBS Player of the Year as voted on by DIBS members. Pitcher Kenny Rogers earned pitcher of the year honors with fellow starter Justin Verlander being recognized for his breakout season. In addition to the three regular season award winners, DIBS named Rogers its Postseason Performer.

I’m pretty sure my postseason awards, as announced in October, follow my voting, but I will briefly go over how I voted.

Player of the Year
1. Carlos Guillen
2. Placido Polanco
3. Curtis Granderson
Pitcher of the Year
1. Kenny Rogers
2. Justin Verlander
3. Joel Zumaya

Breakout of the Year
1. Curtis Granderson
2. Joel Zumaya
3. Justin Verlander
Postseason Player
1. Craig Monroe
2. Carlos Guillen
3. Kenny Rogers

Rogers, that one is pretty much evident. He was the mature and steady arm who helped guide the entire staff. Guillen, that one is, too. He’s just an incredible batter whose contributions go unheralded nationally.

Curtis Granderson, I felt, was an extremely important every-day Tiger whose presence was much-needed in center field, and the team seemed to have its winning streaks when he was getting on base. A big reason the Tigers pitchers did well was defense, and he played great in the middle of the big field. Zumaya was an unexpected breakout and pitched among the highest leverage situations of any reliever in baseball. Verlander snuck up on nobody.

As for Monroe, five post-season home runs put him among the leaders in a single postseason in baseball. Of course, he had a few more games to do it than those 50 years ago, but it was still nice to have him in that company and his OPS was .911. I could have gone with Rogers for his postseason performance, but it was a bit murky with the smudge that showed up.

Hopefully there’s even most voters in next season’s DIBS awards.

Sweaty Man Ian and Big Al have weighed in with how they voted.

Minne’s Justin Morneau won the American League MVP. I could think of a guy I’d rather see win it… but he also played for Minnesota (Joe Mauer). But I take pleasure in the fact a more-deserving candidate than Derek Jeter won.

Carlos Guillen finished 10th, which, to me, isn’t a bad showing. His numbers justified a higher showing, but after first place, what’s it really matter? At least he got votes.

If you had told me this morning Jim Leyland would win American League manager of the year… I’d have … okay, this is a surprise to absolutely no one.

Rod Gardenhire was second. The deposed Ken Macha was third. And Joe Torre was fourth.

So let me get this straight. Tigers fans hated the winner for playing Neifi Perez and starting a strange playoff rotation order. Minnesota fans hated (from when I read a blog or two) Gardenhire because he probably kept them from being a 100-win team with a poor selection of April starters. Macha placed third, and his center fielder whom he started was happy when he was fired. And Joe Torre somehow — gasp! he’s a genius — managed a $200M team through injuries.

Yeah, this is a rather strange award. Nonetheless, I am glad Leyland won it and really couldn’t see any other manager getting it.

In what we hoped at times, expected at others, didn’t expect for some, and ultimately realized was a sure thing, Justin Verlander was named American League Rookie of the Year today.

MLB.com: In so doing, Verlander becomes the first starting pitcher to win AL Rookie of the Year since New York’s Dave Righetti in 1981. Dontrelle Willis won the NL honor in 2003.

He was also the first Tiger to win the pitchers honor since “The Bird” did so in 1976. Lou Whitaker was ROY in 1978. So, yeah, it’s been awhile, huh?

The voting wasn’t even close. Following Verlander (26 first place votes, 133 points) was Boston’s Jonathan Papelbon with 63. Francisco Liriano of Minnesota was third with 30.

Justin Verlander was named Most Outstanding Rookie in the American League by the MLB Players Choice Awards Wednesday.

The Rookie of the Year Award is set for Monday and is voted on by the Baseball Writers Association.

The good and the bad of the Tigers is this: There’s no one important player. This is bad because you’d like to have someone really consistent who can really cause havoc. This is good because it shows the lineup is pretty consistent up and down. And this made my job selecting a player of the year extremely difficult. In the end, I chose Carlos Guillen. Before I go into more detail on the reasoning, first the guys I didn’t pick.

I could have picked Placido Polanco. His absence in the lineup from mid-August to late September left a hole. The Tigers stunk up the joint. Then he went on to win the American League Championship Series MVP for batting somewhere near the stratosphere. He’s a contact guy, he put a lot of runs on the board in limited chances, and he’s one heck of a Tiger. You want to pick him, no quarrels.

Maybe Craig Monroe was more your flavor. He was among the top of the home runs category in close-and-late situations (1 run or tie game, seventh inning or later) this year. In fact, more than half his homers came that way. You bring a memory of this season to mind, you probably see him hitting a grand slam against the White Sox or a home run against the Yankees in the ninth inning. Maybe some of his five post-season home runs come to mind.

I could have picked Magglio Ordonez. His putting runs on the board wasn’t just because he batted cleanup, or that he was typically buttressed in the lineup by Pudge Rodriguez and Guillen. He really did drive in the highest percentage of runners on base. When he went into a slump after the All-Star Break, the Tigers stopped producing runs. He’s a guy you want on your side, for sure. If you wanted to pick him, and I doubt many did, no questions from me.

Or there was Curtis Granderson’s great center field play, or the way the Tigers almost always seemed to win when he got on base and lose when he didn’t. Maybe you liked Brandon Inge’s glovework and 20-something home runs. Maybe you just like Pudge’s leadership. Whatever your flavor, the Tigers probably provided it this season.

In the end, I took Guillen. He just could not be removed from the lineup. Take him away and Magglio’s threat is easier to negate. Take him out and you remove a guy who made it on base 40% of the times he came to the plate. That might not sound like much among some elite batters, but among the hack-often Tigers, it was much needed. Or you like strange stats, his Value Above Replacement (VORP) was 66.3, among the highest in baseball and behind only Derek Jeter for short stops. Oh, and he had a team high 19 stolen bases. In the end, it was his superstar numbers and quiet leadership that swayed me to believe he was the most valuable Tigers batter.

Guillen was the first among equals.

The All-Star Game’s starting battery — Kenny Rogers at pitcher, Pudge Rodriguez at catcher — added another achievement, a gold glove for each hand. In the AL only Detroit had more than one player win a gold glove.

Rogers… well, that was no surprise. It’s his fifth. He’s a cat on the mound. Pudge… that’s no surprise either, really, although I’m sure the competition is getting tighter and tighter. It’s his 12th.

The others were: Texas Rangers first baseman Mark Teixeira, New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, Oakland Athletics third baseman Eric Chavez and outfielders Torii Hunter of the Minnesota Twins, Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners and Vernon Wells of the Toronto Blue Jays.

What do the stats — or at least, how one analyst put them together — have to say about the winners? Baseball Think Factory found several other deserving Tigers.

My Gold Gloves? Rodriguez, Shelton, Polanco, Inge, Uribe, Crawford, Patterson, Suzuki. That’s a bunch of Tigers. Is it really any wonder they led the majors in ERA? It wasn’t all the pitching.”