More End of Season Awards

“It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor. No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.” –Maggie’s Farm

For Ryan Howard, who finally got a chance to hit in the Major Leagues and made sure he’ll never have to do any more work down on the farm. He finished with the highest VORP among National League rookies, hitting 41 XBHs in 88 games. When teams decided not to let proven studs Pat Burrell and Bobby Abreu kill them in the second half of the season, walking them a combined 107 times in 637 PAs, Howard picked up the slack to lead the team in slugging and OPS. With a core of Howard, Utley, Burrell, Abreu and Jimmy Rollins, the Phillies have a very dangerous lineup of players in or near their primes for next year.

The problem, of course, is Jim Thome’s situation, which accounts for Howard’s partial season. Already spending all of 2004 in AAA and behind Thome when he was probably ready for the majors, Howard faced more time in the minors and a potential trade until Thome broke down. Now, Philly is on the hook for three more years of Thome’s huge deal. Sure, he was a masher when Philly dangled those extra years to lure him away from Cleveland, but now he’s 35, clearly diminished, and rehabbing a severe injury. Big and slow players can age very quickly, and Thome has fallen from the face of the team a calendar year ago to being an albatross whose salary will burden the team in a search for rotation help. The Phillies will try to trade Thome this off-season, but will likely have to cover about 2/3 of his salary and will get precious little in return. The worst case scenario is that Philly can’t find a taker for Thome, keeps him, and Charlie Manuel feels obliged to play the big-ticket item ahead of Howard.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend. When I was down, you just stood there grinning.” –Positively 4th Street.

For all of the teams that overcame being completely written off at some point to come back and contend. It seems to me that there have never been so many teams who were so bad, but became so much better by the end of the year. Atlanta, Houston, Oakland, Cleveland and New York all looked terrible at one time or another, but all ended up with winning records, at least competing for a playoff spot into the last week of the season.

Both Atlanta and Houston looked like lost causes in March, combining to lose Carlos Beltran, Jeff Kent, J.D. Drew, Russ Ortiz, Jaret Wright, some of Lance Berkman and most of Jeff Bagwell. Fast forward to October, and they played one another in the NLDS, which is a credit to good player development and great managerial skills. Bobby Cox and Phil Garner had different challenges in season, Cox with a glut of holes to fill with rookies and Garner having to overcome another terrible start to climb back into a pennant race, but both got the most out of available resources.

Oakland and Cleveland looked like they were headed in different directions before the year, with Oakland starting a mini-rebuilding project after trading Mulder and Hudson, and Cleveland building on a good year by adding Kevin Millwood and some bullpen help. Both offenses, stumbled out of the gates, though, with Casey Blake, Aaron Boone, Jason Kendall and Scott Hatteberg hitting like their bats were made out of balsa wood. Once the Indians started hitting like they were meant to hit and the A’s got a truckload of help from the DL and Sacramento (Bobby Crosby, Rich Harden, Dan Johnson), both teams went crazy and sped into the Wild Card race. When Crosby and Harden got injured again, the A’s fell back, losing out to Los Angeles de Los Angeles down the stretch. Cleveland faltered as well, losing a highly publicized 6 of 7 in the last week, including a three game sweep at the hands of the White Sox quadruple-A team.

The Yankees had perhaps the most incredible comeback of the year, because their team was not built to endure hardship, but did so anyway. With a top-heavy roster that relied on John Flahertys and Bubba Crosbys to fill in the gaps, and precious little left in the high minors, injury or failure at the Major League level looked dangerous. After starting 15-30, losing Carl Pavano, Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright to injury and Tony Womack to woeful ineffectiveness, Brian Cashman had to snap out of a two year slumber and do some General Managing. He dug up Aaron Small (an inexplicable success), Shawn Chacon (a more explicable one, given a 1-7 record but strong peripherals in Coors) and Robinson Cano (who they must have forgotten about or else he would have been traded years ago). The Yankees did as the Yankees do, going on a second half roll, winning the AL East and, at very least, lasting longer than the Red Sox.