Friday, November 16, 2012

Outrages I'm having trouble being overly outraged about

Jose Reyes is one-and-done in
Miami.
Outrage 1: The Miami Marlins turned themselves into fish sticks with a major salary-dump trade with Toronto (it's still not official, pending physicals and probably some salary review by the commissioner's office). Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, John Buck ... they signed last winter for big coin with the the Fish, and now they're gone.

In a pure baseball sense, it's probably a good trade for Miami. It's not like they broke up a good team. The Marlins finished last with those high-priced guys. They can finish last without them.

The real reason this deal draws universal derision when the Red Sox got a pass for doing the same thing in midsummer is that Jeffrey Loria and his co-conspirators in the Miami organization have poisoned the well. They don't get the benefit of the doubt, because they burned that long ago.

I believe that Loria and Co. are slimeballs and represent the worst of big-time pro sports ownership. I also believe that they are systematically wrecking Miami as a baseball market, just as they did Montreal.

I can despise Loria and everything he stands for without trashing this trade.

Miguel Cabrera wasn't the worst defensive
third baseman in the league -- hello, Trevor
Plouffe -- but he was close.
Outrage 2: Miguel Cabrera won the American League MVP award Thursday in a one-sided vote over Mike Trout.

Miggy had a big year, but he wasn't better than Trout, Triple Crown or no. Trout wasn't far behind Cabrera as a hitter, and was far superior in the field and on the bases. Yes, Cabrera's team made the playoffs, but Trout's team (a) won more games (b) playing a far more difficult schedule.

But this isn't the biggest outrage of recent MVP voting. This isn't Juan Gonzalez winning an MVP for piling up RBIs in an extreme hitter's park.

Outrage 3: David Price on Wednesday won the AL Cy Young Award in a close vote over Justin Verlander.

Again, Price had a fine season. Verlander was better. This is very much akin to 2005, when Bartolo Colon won the award over Johan Santana, an award the writers apparently began to regret almost as soon as it was announced. Colon had a good year, but everybody knew Santana was the superior pitcher.

The same is true this year, perhaps not to the degree that it was in 2005, but still ... I doubt anybody in baseball would rather have Price than Verlander (ignoring the salary difference).


3 comments:

  1. Good post. I might disagree with you slightly on Cabrera. I vote for Cabrera. Winning the Triple Crown is a big deal. And while Cabrera is not as good an all around player as Trout, there certainly is value in playing a position you are not as good at IF it makes your team better. Let's face it Harmon Killebrew did that for lots of his career with the Twins. His best position was 1B but he played a lot of 3B and LF to get the best overall players on the field.

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  2. Triple Crown...hadn't been accomplished since '67 and he earned it, fending off Hamilton and Granderson for the HR crown, the RBI title and adding the silver bat, - all while moving to a new position. Trout was ROY and needs to show some career (on the field) as Cabrera has. Trout will get his...

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  3. Agree with you all the way. I've never truly cared very much about MVP (or HOF truth tell - baseball to me is all about epic stories and spectacle), but I stopped completely caring about these things when Michael Jordan didn't win the MVP every year between 1990 and 1998. The people voting for these things are just trying to make interesting stories to keep the fans in a buzz - and that's fine.

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