(In Which I Choose a Few, Select Major League Baseball Post-Season Awards as Though I Were a Voting-Eligible Sportswriter)

Yes, sports fans, my picks are in for MVP, Cy Young and Manager of the Year in both the National and American Leagues!

In the American -

• Manager: John Maddon, Tampa Bay. He loses his ace closer, his ace set-up guy and Carl Crawford's 29 homers and 100 RBI and STILL has his team back in the post-season? That's good enough for me.
• Cy Young: Justin Verlander, Detroit. Not much to add there.
• MVP: Justin Verlander, Detroit. Probably lots to add there, but I'll keep it brief. In general, my pool of MVP candidates is drawn from the teams that qualify for the post-season, or teams that were in it up to the end, even if they did not qualify. (Certainly there could be an exception to this, though I didn't find one this year.) Then I look at the candidates' numbers and imagine their teams without them. Verlander clearly had great numbers, no issue there, and without him there were no Tigers this year. That's the 1-2 punch to me. This may not be how you're supposed to do it, but that's why God created the blog, to discuss these kinds of things.
  

In the National -

• Manager: Kirk Gibson, Arizona. Worst to first in the Western Division, with a team that, at least as I was reviewing their stats yesterday, did not look like a likely post-season candidate. Honorable mention to Ron Roenicke in Milwaukee.
• Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles by a whisper over Roy Halladay and/or Cliff Lee of Philadelphia. As Robert Winant said to me, any one of these three could win and there wouldn't be much of an argument.
• MVP: Whether a real sportswriter could do it this way or not I have no idea, but I'm taking Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder of Milwaukee as co-MVPs.

IBL:mm