Eric F. Savage

Picking a Rookie of the Year is probably the most subjective of the big baseball awards. Evaluating a player on such a small sample size is anathema to sabermetricians, and hype can help or hurt the impression a player makes on his new fans. To me, the best rookies not only perform well, they show potential. The guy who comes up and has more HR than BB doesn’t really impress me (though sometimes that’s all you have), the guy that fields well and has clutch hits or pitches and still manages to put together decent numbers are the real future stars.

National League RoY: Troy Tulowitzki. Between Ryan Braun and Tulowitzki, I have to Tulowitzki the edge, but I didn’t really get a chance to see either of these guys play. Based on what I’ve read and what little I’ve seen, Tulowitzki is a talented shortstop who can hit and Braun is a clumsy third baseman who can really hit. Braun pretty much beats Tulowitzki hands down in terms of production, but I don’t trust power numbers from rookies (will he be a McGwire or a Maas?) as much as I do fielding and discipline, so Tulowitzki gets it.

American League RoY: Dustin Pedroia. Sox fans have been hearing about Pedroia since he was drafted, but always with caveats like “maybe he’s too small” or veiled warnings like “he plays with heart”. He came up early in the season and basically stunk up the joint, but his manager had faith, and eventually something clicked. Pedroia turned into a hitting machine, fielded like veteran, and always seemed to be fired up. I think the sox have a solid .300+ hitter for a few years, probably settling into the #2 spot if Ellsbury’s power is low enough that he becomes the leadoff. Runner Up: Daisuke Matsuzaka*

*I love the fact that the baseball market is going global, but something just doesn’t feel right about experienced players winning Rookie of the Year. Can you imagine Manny Ramirez going to play in Jpan and being considered a rookie? Even if I didn’t feel this way I still wouldn’t have given Dice-K the nod over Pedroia.

One of the key differences (beyond the rules of the game) between the 4 major professional American sports is the role of the managers. In football a team wins or loses largely based on the cleverness of the coach. Basketball and hockey teams use styles and plans that the coach comes up with, even if the action itself is largely tactical.

Baseball calls the position a manager, not a coach, and is also the only sport where the manager wears a completely unnecessary uniform. The term manager is probably more accurate, since most of what the manager does is done off-field, keeping two dozen or more alpha jocks in line every day for 6 months. During the actual game, the manager rarely moves, typically waddling out of the dugout only a few times per game. Sometimes a bad call is made and a show must be put on, but the decisions largely make themselves, and the limited number of options often makes them rather easy.

I devote a blog post (the first of several, most likely) to poking a stick at the 30 guys that often make more than a million dollars a year because one of my pet peeves came to light in tonight’s exciting one-game-playoff between the Padres and Rockies.

Why do managers never pull pitchers in the middle of a count?

It was obvious to anyone watching the game that Jorge Julio had nothing. He walked Giles, throwing pitches anywhere but over the plate. His first pitch to Hairston was just as bad, and I said to my roommate, “they need to get this guy out of there”. The cameras showed the manager pacing, not looking happy. The poor pitcher had no control at all, the manager is sitting on a 40 man roster, and this is the most important game of the year. Julio has pitched well this season, but when every pitch counts this much, you have to mitigate the risk. Needless to say, the next pitch left the park.

I have never seen a pitcher pulled in the middle of facing a batter. It’s apparently one of the unwritten rules that makes no sense like not switching sides when you bat (or pitch). There are probably hitters out there who would do well to switch sides when they get ahead or behind in the count, but they don’t do it. Short of an injury or ejection, a manager would sooner watch his team lose while he’s posed on the top step of the dugout than just run out and tell a guy he’s done and he’s not going to get a chance to throw two more balls or lob the meatball the batter is obviously sitting on.