This post is for voting and discussion in the 136th round of balloting for the Circle of Greats (COG). This round of balloting adds to the list of candidates eligible to receive your votes those players born in 1977. Rules and lists are after the jump.
Continue readingThe careers of most major league players are brief and unremarkable. Of 15,403 retired players who debuted since 1901, only 5,102 (33%) posted careers of 200 or more games, and just 2,745 (18%) managed 500 contests. Yet, even among the other 82% of players can be found those who showed promise of becoming successful major leaguers in extended careers, promise that, for one reason or another, went unfulfilled. It is to those players that this post is dedicated. More after the jump.
Continue readingHere it is, folks: our final award for the 2021 MLB season! (Sorry for the lateness of the post; New Year’s Day got a little too busy to dash this off.) If you’d like to read about some candidates and join the voting, please continue!
Hey, everyone! Time for everybody’s favorite awards – the randos! Not sure who the best player in the league was? Or the best pitcher? Well, here, it doesn’t matter. That’s because we’re voting for the Manager of the Year and Rookie of the year on this ballot. More after the jump.
Greetings, once again, friends!
So we’re not dragging out our awards voting into forever, we’re going to handle both Cy Young awards with a single post. I will present the candidate, some statistics, and a brief paragraph’s synopsis of considerations. I don’t want to tarry too long here, because there’s a lot to consider! Just remember to check the bottom of the post for results! Balloting will close Friday, December 17 at 11:59:59, your local time. That is, I’ll tabulate officially whatever is there Saturday morning when I wake up. 🙂 Post after the jump!
Hello, HHS friends!
Here’s our obligatory comment: I’ve been more-or-less totally MIA in 2021. I apologize for that. There’s no excuse, no fancy reasoning. Life is just hard. Hoping you did read my review of Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100. And now, with only lockout news to “comfort” us baseball fans, let’s try to keep things positive. It’s awards season! We need something to vote on before the COG elections in January, am I right?
In 2020, I did not run an awards post. The season was too short, things crept up too fast… it just didn’t happen. But I don’t want that to continue in 2021.
Look, I’m going to be the first to acknowledge: I think the vote-for-pitchers, don’t-vote-for-pitchers debate really muddied the waters in some of our last few discussions; I was thinking that, this year, we would switch from a mixed vote to separate awards for the pitchers and position players. But then, along came a player who screwed the whole thing up. So this year, my initial plan was to do separate awards for pitchers and hitters. Unfortunately, there’s one big reason we just can’t do that. So I’m not going to ask us to do so this year. Okay; without further ado, I believe we should start on the senior circuit this year, as well. So who are our candidates? (As always, description after the jump; rules at the bottom of the post.)
I’m going to start with melancholy. On the antepenultimate page of The Baseball 100, I started feeling a profound sadness. Now, you don’t get 820-odd pages into a book if you don’t like it; it wasn’t a sadness of disappointment. It was a feeling that has accompanied me a handful of times in my life (near the end of the Harry Potter books, during the movie Black Panther, right near the end of Pride & Prejudice, the end of Ron Chernow’s Hamilton biography… surely there’ve been others, though) when I start to mourn the loss of a thing that’s not yet over. I was reading those words about the #1 ranked player, and I was sad to leave the world of the book. I didn’t want to stop reading Posnanski’s prose. I didn’t want to stop hearing the stories of ballgames and childhoods and the way the game has changed and the ways it’s remained the same. I wanted just to be in the moment… which took me, rather profoundly, out of the moment.
But, damn it all, I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t shut the book to let it drag out. Posnanski’s writing is just too good.
OK, so all the mea culpas here – I’ve been pretty absent from the site for a few months. Life is busy, what can I say? Sometime after the World Series, I will get some season-end awards vote posts up. But first, I want to share my review of this book with you all.
Over 200 players made their major league debuts this season. A few will go on to enjoy success over long careers, but most will have careers memorable only for their friends and family members. Following are some notable career debuts, some never before seen in the major leagues.
Continue readingOne game to go on the schedule, and the contestants for both wild card games are still to be determined. The only certainty is the St. Louis Cardinals will be the visiting team in the NL contest. All the combinations and permutations are after the jump.
Continue readingTiger great Miguel Cabrera launched his 500th HR on Sunday, connecting off Blue Jay left-hander Steven Matz, the 346th pitcher to allow a Cabrera regular season blast. Miggy becomes just the 9th player in the 500 HR club to maintain a career .300 batting average. More after the jump.
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