Brad Lidge and Cliff Lee win Comeback Player of the Year in the NL and AL respectively. Two excellent choices, although Mike Mussina should be up there as well.

Somehow Jason Barlett was voted the Rays MVP. Joe Posnanski makes the case against the Tampa Bay shortstop. Now, the Rays played horrible defense last season, and even though Bartlett fell off in his fielding stats this year, he was an improvement. However, did anyone notice Dioneer Navarro's improvement? Or Even Longoria? I guess Barlett has been Jeterated.

Predicting the Cy Young race at Beyond the Boxscore.

Tim Lincecum improved his chances of winning the Cy Young Award Saturday night as he pitched the first shutout and complete game of his major league career. He allowed the Padres just four hits and three walks while he struck out twelve. Bruce Bochy allowed Tim to throw 138 pitches, which I'm sure will raise some hackles. It seems the Giants believe that Lincecum is a different pitcher, and pitch counts don't matter with him. We'll see.

Recently, two studies used strength of opponents to show that Cliff Lee had an easy path to his Cy Young type season. I wonder if the same will hold true for Lincecum? Saturday he made his sixth start against San Diego, ranked last in the majors in runs per game at 3.86. He posted a 3-0 record with an 0.62 ERA against the Padres, allowing three runs in 43 1/3 innings while striking out 49. Against all other opponents, Lincecum's ERA stands at 2.90. Still pretty good, but higher than Santana's 2.70.

The team Santana faced the most is Philadelphia. The Phillies are third in the NL in runs per game at 4.86. Santana is 2-0 against the Mets division rivals with a 2.97 ERA in five starts. He's walked six and struck out 32 in 36 1/3 innings of work, while allowing five home runs. Take the Phillies out of the Santana mix and his ERA drops to 2.64.

Lincecum does lots of things well. His strikeout numbers and durability remain impressive. The Mets called upon Santana to face their most important foe five times and performed extremely well against a tough offense. That should carry some weight as well.

Boys of Summer pulls together two threads on why Roy Halladay is better than Cliff Lee. Roy's faced better competition, both in the batters faced and the starters going against him.

Tim Lincecum pitched into the ninth inning Monday night, loading the bases with one out before leaving with a 6-0 lead. Two of those runners scored, only one of them earned as Tim lowered his ERA to 2.54 and kept the Diamondbacks from gaining on the Dodgers.

With Haren and Webb fading, should Lincecum win the Cy Young award? His great ERA allowed him to go 16-3 on a very poor offensive team. He leads the NL in both strikeouts and strikeouts per nine. He goes deep in games, averaging nearly seven innings per start. His walks are a bit high, but with a home run rate of about 10 per 200 innings, the power isn't there to advance the walkers. The big question: is a half season of Sabathia worth more than a full season of Lincecum? Sabathia pitched all his bad outings with Cleveland., so they don't count toward this vote. In other words, how important is sample size to Cy Young voters?

Twins Fix makes the case for Lance Berkman as ML MVP.

Mike Aviles and Xavier Nady share player of the week honors. Nady proved to be a great pickup for the Yankees, while Aviles seems to be in the middle of every Royals win lately.

The latest Blog Poll looks at the National League Award winners if the season ended now.

The latest Blog Poll is up, this week looking at the potential AL award winners.

The latest Blog Poll is up, this week looking at National League awards.

The latest award voting by baseball bloggers looks at the American League this week.

The latest BlogPoll results are up at Baseball Happenings.

The latest MLB Blog Poll is up, looking at who bloggers think should get the big awards so far. This week looks at the AL races, and it was good to see Carlos Quentin tie for third. I put him number one, since through Sunday he was at the top of the list in both OBA and slugging percentage.

I'm linking to this late, but MLB Blog Poll results for the NL through the end of last week are up. Separate post list MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year.

The latest MLB Blog Poll is up, this week looking at AL award races.

Week two of the MLB Blog Poll is out, looking at who bloggers see as the NL MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year so far. We're switching leagues each week.

Baseball Happenings is running a poll at the end of every week to see who bloggers rate as the MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Years. Each week the league switches, and the votes this week were for the AL players. It should be fun to see how this changes over the course of the year.

The Baseball Writers are taking aim at performance bonuses based on awards:

The Baseball Writers' Association of America voted this morning to approve a resolution in which, starting in 2013, all contracts that have financial terms attached to major awards will not be eligible for consideration for that award.

They're pointing to Schilling's contract in which he gets a bonus for one Cy Young vote. But the conflict of interest is much bigger for beat writers. Some papers don't allow their reporters to vote for awards because they don't want conflict with players. So either players no longer get these types of bonuses, or the vote gets taken away from the writers.

Jimmy Rollins wins the NL MVP, but I haven't seen the voting yet.

The voting is here. If you calculate a strict Borda count, where their is no bonus for a first place finish (10 points instead of 14), Holliday wins the award 292-289. In other words, more voters were sure Holliday was highly ranked (3 votes below second) than were sure Rollins was highly ranked (nine votes below second).

Can you believe David Wright was left off four ballots? Or how poorly Miguel Cabrera polled? I ought to try to do a study on this data to see what statistics were most important to NL voters. Given that 15 of the 26 players receiving votes were on playoff teams, I'm guessing that's a huge influence.

The NL Most Valuable Player award will be announced this afternoon, and ESPN experts are squarely in the the Jimmy Rollins corner. According to win shares, Rollins wasn't even the best shortstop in the league, nor the best player on his team. Win shares does give the award to David Wright, and I'm interested to see how the voting plays out. Most of the really deserving candidates, Wright, Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, and Hanley Ramirez didn't play for winners.

As a side note, how can you have two position players at the level of Ramirez and Cabrera and not post a winning record? What really irks me about the Marlins is that if they tried just a little, they could easily win the NL East.

Alex Rodriguez took home his third MVP award today, with 26 of 28 writers listing him first on the ballot. Magglio Ordonez received the other two first place votes.

A-Rod picked up his third career MVP award, joining an exclusive list that includes just eight other players, including Yankees legends Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. Barry Bonds leads the list with seven MVP awards, while Roy Campanella, Jimmie Foxx, Stan Musial and Mike Schmidt have won three each.

I'm somewhat surprised Vlad Guerrero finished ahead of David Ortiz. David had an incredible offensive year, but I guess the full time DH gig did him in. Congratulations to Alex on a well deserved MVP. He easily could have won five by now.

The pitching triple crown nets Jake Peavy a unanimous Cy Young award.

The San Diego Padres ace received all 32 first-place votes and finished with 160 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Arizona sinkerballer Brandon Webb, last year's winner, was a distant runner-up with 94 points. He was listed second on 31 ballots and third on one.

Interestingly, Webb actually earned more pitching win shares. That came from pitching in a tougher ballpark with a weak offense behind him. Maybe the vote should have been a bit closer. But Peavy pitched equally as well home and away. It's an excellent choice for the award. Congratulations to Peavy on a great season.

The twenty experts at ESPN.com vote unanimously for Jake Peavy to win the NL Cy Young award.

Sam Fuld of the Chicago Cubs wins this year's Dernell Stenson award honoring the slain ballplayer. Fuld plays with Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes:

Fuld, just 12 at the time, had the chance to chat with Detroit Tigers right-hander Bill Gullickson, who was nearing the end of his 14-year career.

It might have seemed that the two had little in common. In fact, both have Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes.

"I got the chance to meet Bill Gullickson and even though I just talked to him for two minutes, it was enough to inspire me," recalled Fuld, who made his Major League debut in September. "So anytime I can talk to young diabetic kids, I look forward to that opportunity."

Since turning pro as the Cubs' 10th-round draft pick out of Stanford in 2004, Fuld has participated in several baseball camps for diabetic children, hoping he can inspire the youngsters as he was inspired by Gullickson.

That kind of attitude and awareness of how his own brand of quiet leadership can have a positive impact on others is a big reason why Fuld was presented Wednesday with the Arizona Fall League's Dernell Stenson Award for Leadership.

Congratulations to Sam. The four previous winners are off to good starts in their major league careers. It's tough to believe four years have passed since the murder of Stenson.

Eric Wedge and Bob Melvin won Manager of the Year for the AL and NL respectively. Congratulations to both deserving candidates who led their teams to the best records in their leagues (the Indians were tied with the Red Sox).

Melvin, of course, led a team that greatly outperformed their predicted won-lost record, a team that posted the best record in the NL despite scoring less runs than their opponents. Making the right moves in close games was critical to the Diamondbacks success.

What I don't understand in the AL voting is the poor finish of Terry Francona. Mike Scioscia and Joe Torre blew him away:

Wedge received 19 of the 28 first-place ballots and got 116 points, finishing ahead of the Angels' Mike Scioscia (62 points). Joe Torre, fired by the Yankees, was next with 61 and Terry Francona of the World Series champion Red Sox got 13.

However, looking at the season in hindsight, the Red Sox fall from their big lead was managed very well. Francona never panicked. He used the huge cushion created early in the year to allow his players to rest and overcome injuries. He did an excellent job of setting his team up to win the World Series.

Of course, a big part of this award is expectation. Wedge out performed his, while Francona were met. Terry, however, deserves more recognition for a job well done.

How can someone who writes about baseball be this far off? Tom Singer lists Chien-Ming Wang third in his Cy Young handicapping. I wonder if this was based on a poll of voters, or just that Wang won a lot of games? We'll know at 2 PM EST.

Update: At ESPN.com, not one of 20 voters listed Wang as a first choice.

Update: Sabathia wins, more to come.

Dustin Pedroia and Ryan Braun took home Rookie of the Year honors Monday. Pedroia won in a run away, while Braun and Tulowitzki finished in the closest race under the current voting system.

The two-point difference was the closest in the NL since the current voting system was adopted in 1980. The previous closest contest was last year, when Florida shortstop Hanley Ramirez edged Washington third baseman Ryan Zimmerman 105-101.

Mark Krieger doesn't seem to think defense was taken into account enough:

As you can see, the baseball writers really like their numbers. In all, they listed nine performance statistics apiece for the two leading candidates. Eighteen numbers. And every one of them reflected performance at the plate.

Nowhere in those five paragraphs will you find any mention of defense. This from a group devoted to explaining the game of baseball.

And that is why Braun, a wonderful hitter and lousy fielder, beat Tulowitzki, a slightly less wonderful hitter and spectacular fielder at a more difficult position.

I'll post PMR for third base later today, but I just checked and Braun is indeed near the bottom of the list, while Troy reigned supreme over defensive shortstops. However, offense does count for a lot, and win shares does put Braun ahead of Tulowitzki. According to The Hardball Times, Tulowitzki posted 25 win shares, 12 over bench, and a rate of .688. The win shares break down 14 offense, 11 defense, a great season for anyone, let alone a rookie. Braun posted 22 win shares, but 13 over bench, and with a rate of .816. Despite coming up on May 25th and being a poor defensive player, Braun contributed more to the Brewers than Tulowitzki did to the Rockies. Braun, however, did it all with offense (20 offense, 2 defense). The vote was just as close as it should have been, but there's no problem taking Braun's offense over Tulowitzki's defense.

Congratulations to Dustin Pedrioa and Ryan Braun on winning the Rookie of the Year and the Jackie Robinson award.

LyfLines wonders what the Cy Young voting would be like if reporters waited until after the playoffs.

Dmitri Young and Carlos Pena win comeback player of the year in the NL and the AL. Young posted the best OBA of his career, while Pena turned out to be one of the top offensive players in the AL. Congratulations to both!

Roar of the Tigers celebrates Magglio Ordonez's batting championship:

You and I know full well that batting average is not a good way to get a comprehensive look at a player's value on the field (I misspelled at least 5 words in that sentence fragment, including a mash-up of 'on' and 'the' into some mutant word that looked like 'onthne'. This was how I knew it was time for me to go to sleep and finish this post in the morning. 100% fact), but that's why the Batting Title is so nice. It has no pretensions. It doesn't really try to say, "this ballplayer is the best hitter." All it does is say, "this dude had the highest batting average at the end of the season, and that is something to celebrate." It says, "I don't really care if the dude was hitting homeruns or dribbling singles, the point is that he put his bat on the ball in a productive way a lot this year and that is a separate skill." It says, "boo yah! Eat it, Mauer."

Batting average was designed to award a batting crown, and it does that very well. It's not a stat that should be used much beyond that, however. Batting average recognizes that the game is about hitting. Walks are very valuable, but fans in general like to see hits. Hits cause action. They move runners and force fielders to make plays. Hits are where the action is. So batting average does a nice job of picking the best hitters without hurting players who also draw a lot of walks. So you can win a batting title like Wade Boggs, who drew tons of walks to keep his batting average denominator low, or like Ichiro Suzuki, who collects a lot of hits to keep the batting average numerator high. Both are valuable, but you have to get hits.

The NL race isn't quite finished yet, as a Matt Holliday 0 for 5 gives the title to Chipper Jones by going to the 10,000th place.

Curt Schilling discusses how the 162 game schedule wears down players:

Contrary to some local beliefs, we didn't fold and we didn't screw it up. We made the post season. Not to belittle any of the other major sports, more because I never played hockey or basketball seriously, but I can't imagine a more grinding schedule than the MLB schedule. Not really for pitchers, though I certainly feel a lot different in September than I did in February, but more the position players.

If you get to the dance and play all the way through you pretty much play close to 200 games in about 225 days. Most of those off days are spent traveling or at the park receiving treatment or working on your swing or something. Deion Sanders and Brian Jordan, both All Pro NFL players and damn good major leaguers said that the ML season and the NFL season weren't even close. The MLB schedule was 10 times the grind of the NFL schedule. It's not any one thing, but the fact is, aches, pains and bruises aside, you suit up every single day and compete against the best players in the world once every twenty four hours.

Don't take that as a whine, it's not life or death, but for the guys suiting up every day it has to be incredibly tough physically, to be good.

He also lists his choices for the Sport News Player Choice awards. He makes good picks (you're not allowed to vote for teammates). Here's Curt on Sabathia:

A few guys, along with Josh, certainly had great seasons, but CC's numbers, when you dive into them even a little bit, are awesome. Hopefully he'll begin to get the recognition he aptly deserves as an ace and one of the 3-4 best pitchers in baseball. The little bit I got to know him at the 2002 AS game made me think the world of him. Great kid who has an immense amount of respect for his craft and the sport.

Over at Epic Carnival, the authors take an early poll on who should win the post-season awards.

Ryan Braun went 3 for 4 with a home run in a losing effort by the Brewers today. Milwaukee scored all six of their runs in the first three innings, but the Cardinals bullpen shut them down over the last six. That gave St. Louis a chance to come back, as they closed to 6-4 before scoring three off Cordero in the bottom of the ninth to win the game.

But Braun raised his batting average to .356, his OBA to .402 and his slugging percentage to .680. Although qualifying for the batting title would be difficult at this point, with the wrist injury to Hunter Pence, the field is clear for Braun to win the Jackie Robinson award for Rookie of the Year.

The batting race may end up interesting anyway. If Braun gets close enough to 502 PA, the rule that allows a player who doesn't have enough PA to win comes into effect. You give the player an 0-for the number of PA he needs to qualify, and if the resulting average would still be highest in the league, the player wins the batting title. Tony Gwynn won the batting title that way in 1996.

Mr. Irrelevant likes Jeremy Guthrie for AL Rookie of the Year.

Coming into this season, it was Erik Bedard, Daniel Cabrera and Adam Loewen who gave Baltimore hope for the future. Despite Bedard's amazing strikeout rate, it's Guthrie who's their ace through first two-fifths of the season. The 28 year-old has only three wins (thanks, Chris Ray!), but check out these numbers: 2.70 ERA, 0.93 WHIP and five or more innings and three or less runs in each of his eight starts. If he pitched for Boston there's a good chance he'd be 8-0 and the talk of baseball right now.

And he keeps getting better. His batting average, OBA and slugging percentage allowed went down from April to May to June. Now he just needs the support from the offense and the pen to pick up some wins.

When I think about who might win the NL MVP, the candidates come easily. Albert Pujols and Ryan Howard are at the peak of their production and already great hitters, and you can easily throw out half a dozen other likely candidates. But in thinking about the AL candidates, I found myself naming older players (Manny Ramirez, A-Rod, Vald Guerrero) or young ones (Mauer, Morneau). I wasn't coming up with names in the prime years of production, so I looked to see who was playing this year with a seasonal age between 25 and 28 (born from 7/1/1978 to 6/30/1982). So here's some names at an age where you might see an MVP season:

• Hank Blalock. Disappointing is the word for Blalock so far. Maybe if Ron Washington works some magic, he'll return to the form of his early career. I don't hold much of a chance of him winning the MVP, but now's the time for him to break out.
• Carl Crawford. Carl does things sports writers like. He hits for a high average, runs well, and has some power. If he can get his homer total over 30, he'll pull in some votes.
• Jhonny Peralta. He'll need to return to his 2005 numbers, but any time a shortstop posts a great offensive season, he should be an MVP candidate. How much his defense holds him back only the voters know.
Alex Rios. His power took a big step forward in 2006, and he'll need to take another to have a shot at the award. And avoid freak illnesses.
• Nick Swisher. His on base average and slugging percentage are fine, but he needs to make them great to win the award from first base. His low batting average makes him less appealing to voters.
• Mark Teahen. Like Rios, Teahen needs to keep improving his power numbers. A poor offense around him will hurt his RBI totals, which voters love.
• Mark Teixeira. His 2005 number put him seventh on the MVP ballot. If he can crack 40 homers or more, he'll move up from that spot.
• Kevin Youkilis. Youkilis' seasonal age is 28 this year and he's never shown a lot of power. He's a long shot.

If you think I missed some age appropriate AL player, let me know.

Aaron Laffey, an Indians prospect, is this year's winner of the Dapper Dan award.

The Dapper Dan Club of Allegany County is hopeful Laffey will be back in Cumberland before the final Sunday of this month as the club will honor him with its top award, the George W. Stevenson-Nicholas A. Perlozzo Memorial Award, annually presented to the person who brings the most national recognition to the Cumberland area through athletics.

The 59th annual Dapper Dan Awards Banquet is Sunday, Jan. 28, 5 p.m., at the Ali Ghan Shrine Club and when Laffey receives this year's top honor he will be following in the footsteps of some very select company from the baseball world, including Sam Perlozzo, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, who last year was the recipient of the club's top honor for the fifth time.

The Indians are taking a long look at Laffey after putting him on the 40-man roster. His strength as a pitcher is keeping the ball in the park.

The Bloggies are now accepting nominations for your favorite web logs.

The Twins superstar trio wins the Pioneer Press Sports Figures of 2006.

Usually, we name only one figure. But how do you separate these three? All had a larger-than-life impact on the Twins' entertaining season.

It's interesting how all three wound up where they are today. There was no grand plan. Instead, circumstances brought them together at just the right time.

Santana spent four years toiling in the minor leagues for the Houston Astros. The book on him was: hard-thrower who almost never uses his change-up. The Twins projected him as maybe a No. 3 starter.

Morneau was supposed to be the Twins catcher of the future. Then he hurt his elbow and for a while became a man without a position.

When Joe Mauer was drafted No. 1 overall in 2001, a lot of people yelped in protest. Exactly why, they wanted to know, didn't Terry Ryan take pitcher Mark Prior?

But here they are. And, all in all, everything seems to have worked out pretty well.

Buck O'Neil posthumously received the Medal of Freedom:

In a 40-minute ceremony under the glittering chandeliers of the East Room, Bush lauded O'Neil for helping break down the barriers of racial prejudice. Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier in 1947, but by then it was too late for O'Neil. "Buck O'Neil lived long enough to see baseball and America change for the better," Bush told the assembled audience. "He's one of the people we can thank for that. Buck O'Neil was a legend and a beautiful human being and we honor the memory of Buck O'Neil."

It's too bad this didn't happen sooner, so Buck could enjoy the award.

Athletics Nation solicits nominations for the Alex Sanchez award:

Really, there has to be an Alex Sanchez Award, so that Neifi Perez can actually be acknowledged for his ability to maintain gainful employment 10 years in a row while sporting a career OPS of .681. Somehow we need an excuse to celebrate Scott Elarton, whose pitching motion and ERA are about equally funny, and John Wasdin, whose bobblehead is actually positioned so he is gazing at the left-center field bleachers.

The Cleveland Indians took home the Organization of the Year award from Topps. The Indians minor league players won more Topps awards during the season than any other farm system:

The Indians' individual winners were Jason Dubois (Class AAA All-Star), Andy Marte (June player of month) and Jeremy Sowers (May player of month) of the Buffalo Bisons; Kevin Kouzmanoff (May player of month) and Adam Miller (Class AA All-Star and July player of month) of the Akron Aeros; Brian Barton (Class A All-Star), Jordan Brown (August player of month), Ryan Goleski (May player of month) and Chuck Lofgren (Class A All-Star); and Neil Wagner (Class A All-Star) of the Mahoning Valley Scrappers.

SethSpeaks makes his case for Justin Morneau winning the MVP, and also rounds up contrary opinions, including yours truly. Meanwhile, Ryan at ProTrade.com voices his disdain for the choice.

Baseball Think Factory and a comment here link to a WFAN interview with Joe Cowley, the writer who voted Jeter sixth on his ballot. Cowley doesn't do a very good job defending his vote. Well worth a listen.

Correction: Fixed spelling of Cowley.

Justin Morneau won the AL MVP. How uncreative. More later when I see the voting.

Update: CBSSportsline has some voting details. Jeter received more 1st + 2nd place votes, but also was listed as sixth by one writer. I agree with one of the comments that noted the anti-NY bias in the voting. As well as the Yankees have done over the last eleven years, they've picked up very few awards. Mauer finishes sixth. Clearly the voters don't know how to value a good catcher who can also hit.

Update: Ben Kabak sends a link to the complete voting. Mauer is all over the list. He's as high as 3rd and as low as 10th, getting votes at every position in between. Interestingly, there seem to be two consensuses about him. One group of nine had him around 3-4, another group of eight had him ranked 7-8. I count 23 votes for Joe, meaning five voters left him off the ballot entirely. Just amazing. Yogi Berra never would have won an MVP with this group.

There's an excellent comment thread underway here as well. Be sure to check them out. As for questionable players appearing on the ballot at all, that's what ranking players 1-10 is for. If you have a favorite, you can vote him low (or even high) and not have it effect the voting that much. I don't have a real problem with that. When I make out ballots like this, I often put someone I like that doesn't have much support just to give people something to talk about.

I just saw a rumor that Jeter and Morneau are going to tie for the AL MVP.

Correction: It's Morneau, not Mauer. I guess it was wishful thinking on my part.

Update: If Mourneau does indeed win the MVP, I'm taking full credit. :-)

It's time for the last award of the year, the AL MVP. This should come down to a race among three players, Jeter, Mauer and Ortiz. That's the order in raw win shares, but the three are tied in win shares above bench. Each has positives and negatives.

Jeter's strength is that he plays almost every day. This year he played 14 more games than Mauer and three more than Ortiz. Even though his averages are lower, he's contributing more often. Jeter is also helped by playing in the second worst run environment in the AL. However, he is a poor shortstop. PMR estimates he cost the Yankees fourteen outs in the field in 2006.

Mauer gets on base at a tremendous rate and hits for power, all from the catching spot. But because he is a catcher, he missed 22 games last season as the Twins kept him rested. That probably helped Joe win the batting title, the first AL catcher to do so.

Ortiz is a great hitter, with a flair for late inning heroics. However, his game is one-dimensional, as he rarely contributes with the glove. Once again, Ortiz's bat isn't enough to overcome Jeter and Mauer's bat and glove, but it's real close, closer than last year with A-Rod.

I'd probably go Mauer, Jeter, Ortiz if I voted. Catchers are involved in so many aspects of the game besides hitting. Mauer, of all three seems to excel in all phases of the sport. The 22 games missed is a big deal, but with those fourteen fewer games, he's still right with Jeter in win shares. Mauer is the better player and deserves the award, although as with yesterday's NL trophy, any of the three would be a good choice.

Howard won the trophy. I'll have more when I get home.

Update: I'm blown away by the lack of support for Carlos Beltran. He only garnered one second place vote and five third place votes. How you vote for another first baseman (Berkman) ahead of Beltran is beyond me.

As for Howard and Pujols, the consensus was that they were 1-2, and more voters put Howard one. It was a close vote, I just thought Beltran would get some #1 votes and more #2 votes.

The National League MVP announcement comes later today, and I expect Albert Pujols to take home the award. My vote originally would have gone to Carlos Beltran, however, based on the fact that he plays a much tougher defensive position. However, I looked at the PMR data today on the two players, and Albert fielded incredibly well at first this season, so well in fact that I believe it negates the defensive spectrum distance. I'll have more on this when I reach home later today. The two were almost even in win shares, with Pujols having more total win shares but Beltran doing better in win shares above bench.

For all the fans of Ryan Howard, there's two very interesting things at work here. The first is that Ryan played in a high run environment, which diminishes the value of his offense. Making up for that somewhat is the fact that Ryan played very well on the road. However, Pujols and Beltran both played in low run environments. That's why they are so far ahead in win shares. Their runs are valued more highly than Howard's.

However, if you look at the three batting on the road, Ryan emerges as the best hitter of the three. Beltran is close and a good centerfielder to boot. In other words, there are extremely good arguments for all three of these players. It will be interesting to see just how close the votes finishes.

Ryan Howard may win the NL MVP award tomorrow. If he does, he'll become the second person to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in consecutive seasons. The other was Cal Ripken:

Ripken more than anybody knows what Howard is going through.

The expectations on the field.

The sudden fame.

"The coolest thing in the world is that you had name recognition in the sport," Ripken said of those first two seasons. "All of a sudden, when somebody would mention your name they would know who you were. The second greatest thing was having face recognition outside of your uniform. You're walking down the street in New York and a truck driver would yell, 'Hey, Cal, we're going to kick your butt tonight.' I think that's cool. The only thing you have to really worry about is that you have to remember who you are. You're just a baseball player. You have to maintain perspective while some of these other things change around you, which are really cool. I think the biggest challenge for all of us is trying to maintain perspective and trying to maintain our own identity and who we are. Don't get caught up in the other stuff."

Yard Work is running a series on the AL MVP. Just keep scrolling.

Giants second baseman Kevin Frandsen is this year's winner of the Dernell Stenson Sportsmanship Award from the Arizona Fall League.

"The six guys who were nominated, it was for a reason," said Frandsen, who was leading the league with a .418 batting average and .511 on-base percentage heading into Wednesday night's game. "Playing against all of these guys for the last six weeks, you understand what the qualities are. Knowing about Dernell and the two other winners before this one -- Mark (Teahen) and Andre (Ethier) -- you know the way they play the game. I'm very fortunate and very grateful for the opportunity to be nominated.

"To win, more than anything, it's a tribute to who Dernell was."

The Fall League instituted the Stenson Award in 2004 in memory of former AFL player Dernell Stenson, who was killed in 2003 in Arizona during the AFL season. He played for the Grand Canyon Rafters in 1998 and was playing for the Scottsdale Scorpions at the time of his death.

A donation in Frandsen's name will be made to a charity of his choice. Funds for the donation were provided by MLB.com's auction of an Alfonso Soriano autographed photo. Soriano played in the AFL in 1998 and was elected this year to the league's Hall of Fame.

This is a fine way to honor a player who met an untimely and vicious death. Congratulations to Kevin Frandsen. The previous winners seemed to do well in the majors.

Johan Santana wins his second Cy Young award, and for the second time it's unanimous.

Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers is the only pitcher to win a Cy Young award three times unanimously, and he did it when it was given to only one pitcher in both leagues.

I suspect as long as he's healthy, Santana is going to compete for the award for many more years.

The surprise for me is Wang beating out Halladay for second place. The voting is here. I find it fascinating. Wang pulled down more second place votes than Halladay, but Halladay appears on more ballots. I get the feeling that there's a group of writers who still put a premium on wins, and a group that puts a premium on what the pitcher accomplishes. Those two pretty even, with the wins group still dominating a bit. I suspect that will disappear in a few more years.

The American League presents its Cy Young Award today, and Johan Santana would appear to be a certainty. SB Nation (which predicted every award so far), made Johan a unanimous choice. The Baroque Rocker led the majors in ERA by two tenths of a run. He struck out more than a batter an inning (best in the AL) while keeping his walks per 9 innings below 2.0. Not only was he good, but he worked a lot, tying for the AL lead in games started and leading the league in innings pitched. He's an easy choice for #1.

The interesting race is for #3. Roy Halladay was the consensus #2 pick, but I wonder if Wang will really finish third. Chien-Ming posted the same record as Johan. His great strength was keeping the ball in the park. He led the majors in fewest home runs per nine innings.

Jim Leyland and Joe Girardi each win Manager of the Year, as expected. Leyland took a long term loser to the World Series, while Girardi guided a bunch of rookies to wild card contention. A great job by both men. Girardi loses his job, but becomes the first manager with a losing record to win the award.