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ROYs and a Cy Young winer

by Matt Smith

It’s that time of year again. The 2007 award announcements are coming out thick and fast. You sit down to write about two winners and find that someone else is celebrating as well. We’ll get to C.C. in a moment, but first let’s look at the rookies.

Ryan Braun and Dustin Pedroia won the Rookie of the Year awards yesterday.

Braun’s victory is the slightly more contentious of the two. Few could argue that he was anything less than terrible at third base, while Troy Tulowitzki consistently made plays on balls that many shortstops couldn’t even get to (including Tulo’s hero Derek Jeter). So if defence is going to count for anything, Braun had to have performed exceptionally with the bat in his hands to make up the difference. Sadly for Tulo, his rival did exactly that.

Thirty-four bombs and a .324/.370/.634 batting line. That’s not a good year, that’s a stunning year for a rookie. Tulo countered with twenty-four jacks and a .291/.359/.479 which is far from shabby either, especially for a shortstop. Still, take the Coors Field effect into account and then factor in that Braun was beating up minor league pitchers until the end of May, and there’s a convincing argument that the Brewers’ basher did enough at the plate to put his defence to one side.

Might Hunter Pence, who came in third in the final standings, have made a run at the award had he not spent a month on the DL? Possibly. He was certainly a contender until he fractured a bone in his right wrist in July and his on-base ability was twinned with some eye-catching fielding in centre field. Still, he ended up with as many at-bats as Braun over the course of the season, hitting exactly half the homers during that span. Even if we accept that he may have been slowed for a few weeks when coming back from the injury, Pence’s counting stats (the main thing the voters seem to concentrate on) would not have threatened Braun’s even if he had escaped injury. He might not be the perfect third baseman, but Braun is a massive talent and looks set to be an impact player for years to come.

In the American League, three names were generally thrown around as being possible AL ROYs before the season started. Kansas City’s Alex Gordon was hailed as a star in the making, but he had an extremely slow start to the season and was never in the ROY running. He picked things up a bit after the All-Star break and most seem to think that this has just been a temporary setback in what will be a great career. Delmon Young came into the season with a vast amount of raw talent accompanied by a few question marks over his temperament following his bat-flip suspension in 2006. Without being spectacular, he had a very solid rookie campaign. Unfortunately for Delmon, you need to be spectacular to get noticed in a Rays uniform. So that just left Boston waiting to collect its first ROY award since Nomar won it back in 1997.

As soon as the Red Sox dumped $51 million on the posting table, everyone was predicting what Daisuke Matsuzaka would achieve in his first year in North America. Wins, strikeout totals and ERAs were debated with vigour, while the ROY award was almost added to his list of accomplishments before he even stepped on to a Major League mound for the first time at Kauffman Stadium on 5 April. Matsuzaka was technically a rookie in the Majors this year, but that’s always a slightly dubious classification when it comes to Japanese imports. When you think of a rookie, you picture a young player in his first year, not somebody who has been pitching professionally for seven years already. The challenges Daisuke faced in acclimatizing to a new league and a new country should not be underestimated, yet to win the ROY award he probably had to perform significantly better than his nearest rival to justify the decision. A 15-12 record with a 4.40 ERA was a very promising start to his MLB career, but not quite eye-popping enough to tip the scales in his favour.

So enter Dustin Pedroia. An unlikely hero at first glance, he ticks all the boxes for a votecaster. Good year at the plate. Solid with the leather. Played on a big-market team. Post-season heroics. World Championship victory as an exclamation point.

Hard to argue against him really.

Boston won’t be receiving all of the awards this year though. It’s just been announced that C.C. Sabathia has won the AL Cy Young award ahead of the twenty-game winning Josh Beckett. When it’s a choice between those two, you can’t really go wrong either way. Beckett had that one extra win to take him to a round twenty, but C.C. was only one behind and overall he had slightly better numbers. Maybe some would claim that Boston’s World Series victory (and Beckett’s contributing performances) should have given the former Marlin the edge, but on the other hand you could argue that Beckett had already won his prize. Sabathia would certainly swap this award for a World Series ring. He’ll gladly accept it as second-choice though and he’s a very worthy winner.

We’re still awaiting the announcement of the NL Cy Young winner, which promises to be a similarly tight decision. Jake Peavy should just have the edge over last year’s winner, Brandon Webb. Peavy’s 240 strikeouts led the Majors and his 2.54 ERA was 0.47 better than the next best mark (held jointly by Webb and John Lackey). His one extra victory over Webb’s total may put the rubber stamp on the decision, but Webb did have four complete games alongside his staggering streak of forty-two consecutive scoreless innings pitched. We shall find out the decision soon enough.

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