The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

I've been thinking about the MVP and the Cy Young awards for this years baseball season and wanted to get my thoughts down.

In the National League, it's hard to vote against Barry Bonds for MVP. If the Giants sucked, like they did in the beginning of the year, then I'd say vote against him because despite the walks and HRs and ridiculous .370-something batting average, he didn't help his team win. Except they've turned everything around in SF and it's mainly because of Bonds, who's clearly the best player in the league, even though he's kindof a jerk. I really wanted to say that Adrian Beltre of the Dodgers or Scott Rolen of the Cardinals should win, but it's got to go to Bonds.

The NL Cy Young should be Roger Clemens, also a bit of a runaway. There's no other pitcher in the NL who really deserves it, so he sortof wins by default. He dominated in the beginning of the year and had 9 wins in his first 10 starts. He has 18 wins now, and should have gotten his 19th the other day, but the game was scoreless until the 10th inning. The only other candidate I can think of is Randy Johnson, who's team sucks and loses games for him all the time. Clemens is leading the charge to the playoffs for Houston, so he should win.

The AL is a whole other story. There aren't any clear winners for either award, but lots of deserving candidates. The MVP should come down to Gary Sheffield and Manny Ramirez, but David Ortiz and Vladimir Guerrero are in the running as well. Even though the Yankees are stacked, Sheffield has carried them all year when just about everyone else has struggled for periods. He's hitting .295 or so right now, but he's hitting something like .340 with runners in scoring position.

Manny Ramirez is an incredible hitter. He's an awful fielder, though, and is basically a liability in left field. I really don't know why he doesn't DH more. He's always a threat at the plate, however, and has put up amazing numbers this year. He may get hurt by splitting votes with David Ortiz, his Red Sox team mate, who's numbers are just about as amazing as Manny's. How did they both put up numbers like that hitting back to back in the lineup? Between the two of them, they must have never left any runners on base.

Vladimir Guerrero's team is slipping out of contention and that may hurt his chances. The Angels are still technically alive, but they probably won't overcome the 3 game deficit behind Oakland and they definitely won't overcome the 5.5 games against Boston in the wild card. His numbers are comparable to these other guys, but he's not really a contender, like his team.

The AL Cy Young is between Curt Schilling and Johan Santana. Both of them have the same record, 20-6, I believe. Santana has been better since the All-Star break and has more strikeouts and is really the one guy making his team, the Twins, legitimate. Boston would be pretty good with Schilling or with a less good 15 game winning pitcher. That's not true in the playoffs, of course, but that doesn't count for the voting. Both of them are pretty much equal, so I'm guessing that Schilling will win since he's been great for years and hasn't won yet. I would vote for Schilling if I were voting.