S10 - NL MVP, Cy Young and ROY awards

NL MVP
This comes down to Frank Zhang vs. Yamid Molina. Molina best Zhang in (HR and RBI) however pales in AVG and OPS. Zhang candidacy is always tough to determine as, you do have to factor in his home park. With that said a .372 average and 1.300 + OPS is too much to ignore especially considering he did still hit 64 HR.

Pick: Frank Zhang (Col)

NL Cy Young
This one has no clear cut winner and several intriguing candidates. I am against relievers as Cy Young’s unless they have an utterly dominant season or there is a complete dearth of SP candidates, so that rules out Davison. York did fit under the utterly dominant category but I can’t value 66 IP over the 200+ provided by the 3 starter candidates. Out of the three starters Bonilla was the best leading the candidates in IP, ERA and K’s and only falling 2 W’s behind the other candidates (Owen and Gordon).

Pick: B. Bonilla (NY)

AL ROY
This one really comes down to Redding (SF) vs. Demarlee (Lou/Sal) since Demarlee clearly trumps all other hitting candidates. Demarlee’s stat line of 47 HR 115 RBI .307 is too tough to ignore considering it was borderline MVP candidate. A good back story on Demarlee is he was drafted by Lou and then traded to SF. I realized my mistake and attempted to trade back for him for two seasons without success. He was then dealt to Salem, at this point I re-doubled my efforts to get him back, before finally succedding with what was probably my 20th offer for the Slugger. For the season Demarlee was a member of 3 organizations.

Pick: Demarlee (Lou/Sal/SF)

NL ROY
I found this one a very difficult one to sort out in the end it came down to Reyes (SLC), Keagle (Col) and Santiago (SJ). Keagle’s hitting numbers were beyond impressive however, his home park did come into my thought process especially considering he only he .273 in Coors, had he played in a neutral park that would have been closer to .250. Although I did think it would be fun to watch Radek’s head explode if he picked him as ROY, I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

So in the end it came down to a battle of two pitchers Reyes and his 200 IP vs. Santiago and his 120 IP. Typically, I place a huge premium on IP especially if the rest of their stats are comparable. However, Santiago’s 13-0 in an extreme hitters park did give me cause to waver. In the end I had to go with Reyes who ERA was only slightly higher than Santiago but pitched 80 more innings.

Pick: David Reyes (SLC)