re: Invaluable

let me start first and foremost by declaring that tim lincecum is as deserving as any for the NL cy young award (there you go, d.r.w.). and if he and the indians' cliff lee get their dues, it will certainly produce some interesting precedent for the yearly discussions when people whine about mvp candidates on losing teams.

that is just it, though. why all this convention/tradition around what player should be declared the most valuable player? is there a reason why the person must play for one of the eight teams that make the playoffs? or, in the case of k.c.r.'s post, does the person have to have been with the team the entire season - or just long enough to make an impact?

sabathia and ramirez actually provide great material for a comparison.

without a doubt, cc has been one of the best pitchers in the national league in the second half of the season. if you want value, sabathia is your man, helping milwaukee do its best tampa bay impression. but, this is where we can bring the idea of value into focus. given that the brewers now sit 10 games out in the NL central and 2.5 back in the wild card race, does sabathia's performance have the same allure? indeed, the necessity to be a player on a winning team features less prominently in cy young conversations than mvp ones (although the reason for that is not altogether clear). but if you were to put cc's value in a sentence, would you say that he was valuable because he helped the brewers almost make the playoffs? or because he helped the brewers avoid another season in the NL cellar? perhaps that adds value from a fan and/or revenue perspective, but it seems tough to say - especially given the brevity of his tenure in sausagetown - that he has been the savior that could bring a ring to wisconsin.

ramirez, on the other hand, has revitalized himself and his new team. after crying game after game in the yankees' dugout, joe torre is enjoying watching manny play on his side, with or without a real haircut. like sabathia, ramirez has put up gaudy numbers after coming to the national league (albeit over a shorter time period). with arizona sputtering, the dodgers look poised to return to the postseason and to perhaps even win a playoff series. value? how about hitting nearly .400 with a home run almost every 3 games, putting up bonds-ian OPS numbers? if LA holds on to take the NL west, ramirez will be hailed as the man who boosted his team into october.

does it matter that he joined the team after playing 100 games in boston? if you take a look around chavez ravine, there doesn't seem to be a single fan that remembers the pre-manny era. and as for opposing managers in the NL west, they're feeling the same sinking feeling that they grew all too accustomed to whenever barry lamar stepped into the batters' box.

that fear, that presence - that is what value is all about, as bonds' seven mvp awards attest. choosing manny may not jive with tradition, and it may not fit the baseball honor code. but as captain barbosa famously remarked, the code is more like guidelines, anyway.

sabathia hasn't been able to put his team over the top, and for that reason, he will not win the cy young. but manny's performance may be enough to make people forget that he ever relieved himself inside the green monster. alfonso soriano surely his has fingers crossed, but manny's got as good as chance as any to take home the trophy this season.

p.s. vote lincecum for NL cy young! can you hit that changeup?

Invaluable

Most Valuable Player. Those three words have stymied journalists and baseball fans alike for years, as it seems as if every season there is the same annual debate over what exactly they are supposed to mean. March Madness chose to take the easy route with its "Most Oustanding Player" award, which you hand to the best player and move on, but baseball (along with many other sports) does it the hard way, insisting that the recipient must not simply be outstanding, but "valuable."

It's an especially intriguing question this year, because two of the athletes in consideration for the National League award are recent arrivals to their league: Manuel "Manny" Aristedes Ramirez Onelcida and Carsten Charles "C.C." Sabathia. Both players are being mentioned as candidates for an award that they could not possibly have won at the season's halfway point, when they worked for American League clubs (and were not in MVP form).

Having both been reborn when traded to the Senior Circuit, the question concerning both players becomes: how do you interpret "value?" Many would argue that the award is best interpreted in the sense of value to one's team--how much that particular club's season was improved by the presence of that player. By this (very common) logic, however, both players would seem to be entirely undeserving of the award. As terrifically as Manny and C.C. have played for their new teams, it seems unrealistic to think that the Brewers, for example, have benefited more from half a season of C.C. than they did from a full season of Ben Sheets. Few players in the history of the game, if any, have actually been twice as good as their next greatest contemporary, and that would be the message if Sabathia or Ramirez were deemed to be the most valuable to their teams.

There is, of course, another way of looking at the term "value"--the run-scoring (or run-preventing, in Sabathia's case) value of the player's production over the course of the year. It generally isn't an MVP contender's fault if he gets traded (although an exception applies to Mr. Ramirez), the argument goes, so why should they be deprived of an award for their hard work (again--exception for Mr. Ramirez) if their team decided to ship them off and rebuild? When evaluated not by their value to their new team, but by their value as score-affecters over the course of the entire season, Manny and C.C. are quite legitimate NL MVP candidates.

Neither way of interpreting the MVP award is correct, although the second line of reasoning does have some interesting implications. Part of the MVP tradition is that it generally can only go to a player on a contending team. This is entirely consistent with the "team value" line of reasoning, since if a player's club doesn't make it to the postseason, they may not have provided as much value as the stars of playoff teams. However, if the half-and-half seasons of Manny and C.C. are going to be considered for the award, it means we are using a "player value" framework, in which case any player on any team is eligible. Manny or C.C. may end up winning it, but if they are even going to be considered, it means there are many other players to look at as well.

what the hell, bruce bochy?

if you ever want to learn how to be a bad (yet surprisingly loved) manager, watch bruce bochy.

the guy is ridiculous. he's happy with mediocre performance, he doesn't follow through on his promises, he doesn't understand how to handle his pitchers, and he no game sense.

case in point: the giants-dodgers game today. matt cain is topping 120 pitches, and bochy leaves this 23-year-old - who is one of the young pitchers SF is betting the franchise on - out there to a) blow out his arm and b) blow the game to manny ramirez. then, when the giants have the bases loaded, he leaves in scrub jose castillo and tosses in untested eugenio velez instead of pinch-hitting with emerging left-field stud fred lewis. (i apologize for knowing much more about these no-namers than a normal baseball fan should expect to know.)

lucky for bochy, a few fumbles from the dodgers let the giants come from behind in the ninth. and, smiling away in the california sun, he rests on his nonexistent laurels while the SF media grins, too, satiated and congratulatory.

bruce bochy, you make me sick.

p.s. there's a little bit more pooping on manny ramirez to be done. as i watched him come up to bat today, i checked out at his helmet, and that shit looks worse than vlad guerrero's cap. and he's been with the dodgers for less than two weeks! can this guy keep anything clean? good luck to joe on getting manny to trim those bangs...

Poop on Manny

Ladies and gentlemen, the first person I would officially like to poop on through this site is one Manuel "Manny" Aristides Ramírez Onelcida. First of all, I had no idea Manny Ramirez was actually named that until I just looked it up four seconds ago. But that's not why I want to poop on him. The reason is this: since his hotly contested trade to the Dodgers, Mr. Onelcida is hitting .565 with four homers and nine RBI's in six games.

Now, those are unholy, ungodly numbers, but there are several potential nonpoopworthy explanations. The first, obviously, is random coincidence. It's certainly not unheard of for a hitter to get that hot, and the fact that Manny happened to start tearing the cover off the ball the day he first felt the California sunshine could just be a coincidence.

There's also the AL/NL factor to consider. It's no secret the American League has dominated its counterpart over the past decade in everything from World Series titles to All-Star Game wins to interleague play records. Manny could be the latest embodiment of what is known as the Renteria Principle, in which a player's production shifts significantly once he changes leagues, inciting riots and civil unrest in Boston.

My guess is that both of these factors have contributed, in at least a small way, to Manny's hot streak, but there's also the stench of deliberate sabotage. You may not believe the charge that Scott Boras promised the Red Sox that Manny would play nice if they let him become a free agent next season, but at this point it's tough to put anything past Boras, or Manny. And this offer/ultimatum certainly makes it seem as if Manny Ramirez was not only deliberately being a terrible teammate, but also sacrificing his on-field production in order to necessitate a trade. It's not quite the 1919 World Series, but it's also not the way the game was meant to be played. Obviously, as a Red Sox fan, I'm biased, but I think we can all get behind pooping on that.

EDIT: I should add that there would, in fact, be some irony in pooping on Manny.