213 Miles From Shea

213 Miles from Shea is proud of our affiliation to the Baseball Bloggers Alliance and as per tradition, each year members nominate players and managers for their performance during the baseball season. The kicker is that since this is a Mets site, I can only vote for the National League, which makes sense because I wouldn’t really be qualified to make decisions about the American League. So here are your National League nominees from 213MFS:

Connie Mack Award (Manager of the Year): Freddie Gonzalez
This was probably the toughest vote in the National League because for the most part, the teams with a lot of talent won their divisions and made it into the playoffs. If the Mets still competitive deeper in the year, than Collins should be the winner (and may still have a Dark Horse shot). Freddie gets it because he got his players to move beyond last year’s epic collapse and back into the playoffs this year, even if it was for just one game.

Willie Mays Award (Rookie of the Year): Bryce Harper
Harper sort of had this award wrapped up before he stepped on the field this year. He performed exactly how we all thought he would (ie, literal All-Star) and he deserves the Rookie of the Year Award.

Goose Gossage Award (Best Reliever): Craig Kimbrel
Talk about a closer. 42 saves, tied for third best in the Majors, and 1.01 ERA. In addition, he has 16.7 strikeouts per nine innings.

Walter Johnson Award (Cy Young): R.A. Dickey
Dickey is more than just an amazing story, he’s the best pitcher in baseball right now. He had one terrible month this year, and despite that he leads the league in strikeouts, complete games, shut outs and almost leading the league in wins and ERA. He was one of the few bright spots on the Mets this year and always gave the Mets a chance to win, which is what you want out of your Cy Young.

Stan Musial Award (MVP): Buster Posey
This was tough, statistically Posey is really close to Braun, who also had a tremendous year. I’m not letting Braun’s steroid incident from last year impact my decision about MVP this year. I have two qualifications for MVP. The team must be completely different without that player and the team should be competitive, possibly playoffs. Braun almost has both of these, you can make the argument that the Brewers were competitive until the end. Posey ultimately gets the award because when the offense of the Giants started to fall apart, he stepped up, filled in at that role and put the team way ahead in the division.

The Mets already have had two minor league players that have elected for free agency: Jack Egbert and Garrett Olson.

Both players were far, far down on the depth chart coming out of Spring this past year, and they each pitched in a singular MLB this season:

Egbert (May 28), 0.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 K, 0 BB
Olson (Aug 8), 0.1 IP, 3 H, 4 ER

I was at that game that Olson pitched (the Mets lost 13-0). Since that was the only game that Olson ever pitched in a Mets uniform, his career ERA as a Met is 108.00.

As you can tell by the numbers (in terms of usage), this is not a loss to the Mets organization.

In my opinion, there are two benefits to the new Post Season Model in Major League Baseball.

First, winning your division means something. You don’t want to be put in a one game playoff.

Second, it makes the end of the season more exciting. This point isn’t as objective and benign as the first point, but it still holds true. Forcing these effective game 163’s, and increasing the chances of actual 163’s feels contrived and manufactured, but they are exciting.

Now the new Wild Card format feels classic like how the “World Baseball Classic” feels classic, but last night, as you know by now, an umpire call changed the course of the game, the fans started throwing objects on the field and the Wild Card game between the Cardinals and the Braves became legitimately historic.

To make a long story short, ball was hit to the shallow-ish part of the OF, fell between two fielders who thought the other fielder called it, and as it came down, the Umpire called the infield fly rule.

The reactions to this play generally call for one or two revisions to Major League Baseball. Some call into doubt the playoff system. Others call a revision for the infield fly rule and/or Umpire placements in the playoffs. This call was a direct result of an interpretation of the rule, but throwing out the playoff system is a disproportionate response.

Game changing moments in games that shouldn’t happen, happen all the time. They are usually hidden deep in a season or in a playoff series, so the reform movement doesn’t come up as much. What happened to the Braves sucks, but for the overall fairness of Major League Baseball, this new format is the best possible. It makes winning the division mean something, and a three game series would give the winner of that series a distinct advantage over division winners as well.