MLB Blog: Hot Corner - Entries from September 2009

The weather in Buffalo this past week has proven that summer is pretty much over. Confirmation of that fact also comes with the end of the Major League Baseball season.

2009 was an odd year for baseball fans. There were plenty of outstanding performances and milestones, but - outside of the American League Central - there weren’t any stirring pennant or Wild-Card races.

Anyway, the end of the season also brings the annual debate about who should receive the major awards – Most Valuable Player and Cy Young - in the American and National Leagues.

While I may not have a vote, I still have opinions, and here is my breakdown of who should win the major awards in each league:

American League Most Valuable Player – New York Yankees’ captain Derek Jeter entered the 2009 season with a career batting average of .316, but the 35-year old seemed to have gotten a little better with age in 2009. Entering Wednesday, he ranked third in the A.L. with a .333 average and was also third in the league with 64 multi-hit games.

Placed in the leadoff role for the first time since 2005, Jeter also has reached the 30-steal plateau for only the fourth time in his career. It may come off as some sort of Lifetime Achievement prize, but Jeter in 2009 truly deserves to be the A.L. MVP.

American League Cy Young Award – It’s hard to be the ace on a team that went nowhere after flirting with a division lead through May, but Zach Greinke of the Kansas City Royals was solid the whole season. He has still won two-thirds of his decisions (16-8) and leads the league with a 2.06 earned run average.

Opponents are only batting .229 against him, the second-best rate in the league behind the Yankees’ fellow Cy Young contender CC Sabathia. But Greinke has 43 more strikeouts than Sabathia and also twirled three shutouts to tie Roy Halladay for the league lead. It should all add up to Kansas City’s first Cy Young winner since David Cone in 1994.

National League Most Valuable Player – It would be hard to argue if St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols takes a second straight MVP award. A perennial Triple Crown contender, Pujols enters Wednesday ranking third in batting average (.328) and runs batted in (133) while leading the majors in home runs (47).

His slugging percentage of .668 is 75 points (!) higher than N.L. runner-up Prince Fielder (.593), and his five grand slams are by far the most in the majors – no one else has more than three.

National League Cy Young Award – The Cards should sweep the major awards, as Chris Carpenter should hold off teammate Adam Wainwright for the hardware. Carpenter’s league-leading earned run average of 2.30 isn’t the deciding factor (Wainwright ranks third at 2.58), nor should winning percentage hold sway (Carpenter is 16-4 while Wainwright is 19-8).

Carpenter gets my nod because of two things: his 11-game winning streak he posted between July 5 and September 7 (a stretch in which the Cards broke away from the pack in the N.L. Central race) and his 2.15 ERA in road games, a category in which Wainwright doesn’t even rank in the top 10.

………

The playoffs should be interesting, even though most of the chatter will be about the return of the Yankees to the post-season after a one-year absence.

The real story should be out west, where the two Los Angeles teams – the Dodgers in the National League and the Angels in the A.L. – could steamroll any foe.

The Dodgers could have a tough time if they face St. Louis, but should still be able to take the N.L. pennant. The Angels’ only real test could come against the vaunted Yankees (against whom they split their 10-game season series).

In the end, I foresee a Freeway Series where weather shouldn’t be a factor for late October games. The SoCal sideshow could be as interesting as the games, but I like the Angels to prevail in six games over the Dodgers.

Perhaps there’s never been a better time for a Buffalonian to be a fan of the Houston Astros.

That’s because this past Tuesday, with 13 games left in the regular season and the Astros reeling from a seven-game losing streak, they named Dave Clark their interim manager.

Younger fans might not recall, but Clark was one of the first stars to emerge for the “modern” Bisons, back when Triple-A ball returned to the city in 1985.

Clark first played for the Herd in 1984, when the club was a Double-A affiliate of Cleveland. He returned to town in 1987 as a Triple-A player, and made the Bisons’ final season at War Memorial Stadium quite memorable.

His .340 batting average and .621 slugging percentage in ’87 have remained team records through the modern era. Clark homered 30 times that year, too, a milestone reached by only by six Bison players since then.

Clark returned for another 78 games in 1992, when he was playing in the Pittsburgh organization. He batted .304 in that spell with another 11 homers.

For his contributions over the years, he was inducted into the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.

Now Clark’s at the top rung of the managerial ladder, after having good success in minor-league stops in Single-A Hickory (85-55 record) and Double-A Corpus Christi, where he won a championship in 2006. At the time of his promotion, he was Houston’s third base coach, a position he took after compiling a 64-79 record in 2008 while managing Triple-A Round Rock.

Clark will be evaluated for the Astros’ permanent managing position not on whether he wins a majority of the 13 remaining games, but rather on how he will relate to the players.

Astros general manager Ed Wade believes Clark will do just fine, saying, “We saw how he handled himself at the minor league level and we’ve seen how he conducts himself at the big-league level, with the rapport he’s created with the players and his stand-up personality.”

Clark will also be helped by another former Bison: Al Pedrique, who played 61 games for Buffalo in 1988. Pedrique, who had been the Astros’ minor league field coordinator, was named third-base coach.

………

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants had done all he could to keep his team in the hunt for the National League Wild Card playoff spot. Without his 14-6 record and 2.47 earned run average, the Giants wouldn’t even be close.

But after being a model of consistency over the past three seasons, his performance last Sunday against the Los Angeles Dodgers was very puzzling.

Lincecum allowed five runs, matching a season-high, in a 6-2 loss at Dodger Stadium. He also walked four while striking out three, only the second time this year he recorded more free passes than K’s. And his 87 pitches matched the fewest in a 2009 start since he threw only 78 on opening day.

The opener, in which he worked only three innings, was the last time Lincecum went as few as the four frames he threw on Sunday.

Postgame, the Giants ace said, “It’s hard to say you let the team down, but I just felt like I could have done a better job out there, put up a better fight.”

“He had an off-day today and we took advantage of the opportunity,” Dodgers manager Joe Torre said.

The rough outing may have spelled the end of the Giants’ post-season hopes – they’re about five games back in the wild card chase with less than 10 days remaining in the season. And for Lincecum, who has never been to the playoffs, it might have been a doubly crushing blow, as he is now considered a dark horse candidate (behind St. Louis’ Adam Wainwright and Chris Capenter) for the N.L.’s Cy Young Award.

Categories

Quicksearch

Syndicate This Blog

Archives

Wednesday, September 30. 2009

Major League Hot Corner with Mike Haim: Jeter takes MVP honors

Thursday, September 24. 2009

MLB Hot Corner with Mike Haim- Houston Astros