With the selections of Dontrelle Willis over Brandon Webb and Jody Gerut over Angel Berroa, the TSN awards will be gaining less respect than ever from baseball fans.

It's a close contest between Halladay and Hudson, but I truly doubt that TSN's vote for Halladay will influence the Cy choice. My guess is that Halladay will get the Cy because he had the most wins (an irrelevant factor) and pitched the most innings (a relevant one). The difficult part of evaluating Halladay and Hudson is the role of ballparks and defence in their statistical performance. I cannot imagine that Cy voters as a whole have the ability to sort it all out, and will rely on the tried and true to make a decision (W, IP and ERA).

With the selections of Dontrelle Willis over Brandon Webb and Jody Gerut over Angel Berroa, the TSN awards will be gaining less respect than ever from baseball fans.

Something tells me that the fans aren't exactly clamoring for Webb and Berroa.

Craig B,

You know what I mean, fans who follow the game seriously. And for the very casual fan, who is Jody Gerut anyway?

TSN should rename the award to "Most Interesting Rookie" and give it to Willis for his delivery and to Gerut for his name.

Something tells me that the fans aren't exactly clamoring for Webb and Berroa.

That's actually why the selection of Gerut surprises me.

I cannot imagine that Cy voters as a whole have the ability to sort it all out, and will rely on the tried and true to make a decision (W, IP and ERA).

They also don't have the desire to sort it all out, not at the risk of becoming zombies, hunched over their computers. However, because of their emphasis on wins, the writers are quite likely to be impressed by Doc's 15 consecutive decisions, a feat that was accomplished exactly once in the last 60 years, by "Cy" Clemens.

where is there to go but down?

Well, there's sustained excellence for the next dozen years or so, a bunch of all-star starts, a pennant or two, and a handful of additional awards. "Down" may be inevitable, but it doesn't have to begin right away.

but I truly doubt that TSN's vote for Halladay will influence the Cy choice

I hope not, ballots are due before the start of the postseason.

With the selections of Dontrelle Willis over Brandon Webb and Jody Gerut over Angel Berroa, the TSN awards will be gaining less respect than ever from baseball fans.

Do people really care about TSN? I don't think I've ever heard someone refer to a player as a TSN award winner (outside of the day it's named).

I find with the internet that sports periodicals are worthless to me. By the time I get it it's almost a week old. I can read the same thing on the internet right after it happens, and it's free (and a lot of times what's in the magazine is on their website as well).

http://economics.about.com
I find with the internet that sports periodicals are worthless to me.

It's not just sports periodicals.. the whole magazine industry is having this problem.

It's why Primedia (publisher of a ton of specialty mags, particularly car magazines, New York magazine, and former publisher of Seventeen) bought About.com a few years ago for a ton of money. Unfortunately, since the .com crash we've become the redheaded stepchild of Primedia, which is kind of silly since I'm under the impression About is quite profitable. It's got to be because of those million of pop-up ads we've got. :)

The Internet really is changing how traditional media operates, even if it is at a much slower pace than writers in the late 90's predicted.

Mike

I find with the internet that sports periodicals are worthless to me.

I can tell you that it's not just sports periodicals; news or current event magazines of every kind, along with most newspapers, are fighting a losing battle against the Internet. If you publish weekly or more frequently, then you used to sell yourself to subscribers as the latest news, the timeliest reporting; that's gone now. If you're a print publication today, then you have to be committed to selling the overview, the big picture, the reflective analysis of trends and events from a distance, that sort of thing. If you try to be just a newsmagazine, reporting the events of the day or the week, you're sunk. Maclean's, Time and Newsweek are hanging on only by their reputations and a rapidly aging subscriber base; only one of those three will be around in ten years, if that. The Net has become and will forever be the fastest source of breaking news, even more so than TV in many cases, and the reliability of the information has skyrocketed (thanks in no small part to major news organizations going online themselves; how many of us tuned in to cnn.com or newsworld.cbc.ca on 9/11?).

In the sports lexicon, I haven't read newspaper boxscores in years, and I rarely read game accounts because I already know what happened. What else is there to sell? If you're daily newspapers, you replace game accounts with profiles, opinions and columnists (compare the number of talking heads in papers today to ten years ago; no comparison). If you're Sports Illustrated, you load up on the swimsuit issues and lean heavily on investigative reporting (like putting a tape recorder in front of a redneck Atlanta reliever and ending his career). If you're Baseball America, you narrow your focus to a single niche area and set up a solid subscription-based Website on the minor leagues. If you're Baseball Weekly, you add football coverage in a desperate attempt to ward off the reaper. And if you're The Sporting News, you get bought out by a major network as a loss leader while counting down the days to oblivion.

Tell you what, folks: ten years from now, more sports fans will be getting their information and analysis from places like Batter's Box than they will from newspapers or magazines -- and it won't stop at sports, either. I can't express what an information and power revolution that's going to be.

Great minds think alike, Mike ... some just think faster than others. :-)

http://economics.about.com
Great minds think alike, Mike ... some just think faster than others. :-)

Nah. I'm just more bored than you are, so I take more breaks from work. :)

I think about the subject a lot because About provides me with over a third of my income, and I'm saving money to buy a house.

The internet has really changed how people look for information. I've had a *ton* of economics students e-mail me and tell me that before they'd go to the library to get information on an economics subject, but now they come to my site (and others like it), and only when they can't find what they need do they make the trip.

The biggest problem with that is nothing on my site is peer reviewed, whereas academic books and journal articles are. So there's both a credibility problem (though students care very little about that.. they just want an answer) and the problem that what I write might be flat-out wrong. Fortunately whenever I do write something stupid I get a dozen e-mails a day from profs pointing out the problem until I change it. So in some sense the system works.

Overall, I think magazines and academic journals will still exist twenty years from now, but they'll play a much smaller role in society than they do now.

Mike

Given that only Robert Dudek and I around here seemed to favour Pujols for MVP (playing time, playing time, playing time!), I'm amazed nobody is complaining about Bonds losing TSN Player of the Year.

Pujols seemed to be the idiot's choice when he was flirting with .400 and a triple crown, but after the Cards started falling away, so did Pujols' supporters.

We might complain about MVP bias against Bonds, but it's nothing compared to TSN. TSN has a major Bonds blindspot: Bonds won it in '90 and '01, but lost it in '91 to Ripken, in '92 to Sheffield, in '93 to Thomas, in '00 to Delgado, in '02 to Rodriguez, and now to Pujols. Some of those are justifiable, or at least debatable, but Gary Sheffield? And I get the feeling A-Rod's pick was the result of anti-Tejada sentiment rather than picking the true Player of the Year.

Jurgen,
I noticed TSN's choice of Pujols, but didn't comment on it. While I disagree with Robert and you, your arguments were reasonable. I don't see such arguments for Willis/Webb, and Gerut/Berroa.

As for an anti-Barry bias at TSN over the years,you might be right. A-rod over Barry last year? Pshaw.

I think Halladay actually has room to improve. He went winless two months of the season. Hudson finally avoided a poor start this season, only to have the bullpen probably cost him four wins, so if Halladay knocks off one poor month next year, he could feasibly win even more games, lower his E.R.A., allow fewer hits, etc. And if the Blue Jays play better defence next year? Honestly, it's not out of the question for Halladay to reel off 26-28 wins, given the offensive support he'll receive.

... not to mention the bullpen support ;)

Actually, that's a cheap shot, because we really don't know what the bullpen will be next year. In any case, since Halladay goes so deep into games, the quality of the bullpen matters much less to him than to most starters -- particularly the quality of the middle relievers.

A-Rod had a great year last year and is an above average defensive shorstop. Bonds' numbers were great last year, and he probably had a little more value than A-Rod (due to park), but it wasn't a cakewalk.

Robert,

Barry went .370/.582/.799 in a pitcher's park in 2002 and A-Rod went .300/.392/.600 in a hitters park in 2002. Two hundred points of OBP and slug don't make it a cakewalk?

Let's take it down a level. Suppose Barry went .300/.450/.600 (typical MVP stats) in a pitcher's park and Alex went .260/.300/.450 in a hitter's park. Would there be any doubt that Barry should have been the MVP even if he was an average leftfielder and Alex was a good defensive shortstop? It's really the same thing. Barry got on base 1.5 times as often as Alex and hit for 1.33 times as much power.

Average fielding left-fielder versus a near gold-glove shortstop. As I said, I still think Barry was more valuable (and lets remember that OPS does not equal value - there are all those issues related to the real value of those walks and solo homeruns) but A-Rod's enourmous defensive and positional value go a long way to almost balancing the scales.

Robert,

I'll give it one more go.

Pair Barry up with an average shortstop of Alex Rodriguez quality defence. Let's say that shortstop hits .220/.280/.350 (we're giving up something for the leather). I'll think you'll agree that these guys are freely available.

Pair Alex up with an average leftfielder of Barry Bonds quality defence. Let's say that the leftfielder hits .270/.380/.480. I think you'll agree that these guys are not so freely available as the shortstops one of whom Barry is paired with.

If you run simulations with Barry's pair and 7 other players and compare them with Alex's pair and 7 other identical players, I guarantee you that Barry's team will score at least 20 runs more per season, and probably much more than that.

And that doesn't even account for the park effects.

Mike,

Please run your simulation.

Note also that Barry played in 143 games in 2002 and A-Rod played in 162.

...but it wasn't a cakewalk.

Um...

A-Rod--35 Win Shares

Barry--49 Win Shares

That's a difference of one 2002 Jose Cruz Jr.

See for yourself.

Barry's 2002 peformance would tie with Williams and Mantle as the 10th best since 1901.

One Cruz may not be much in J.P.'s eyes, but I think it still qualifies as a cakewalk.

Can Base Runs prove Mike and I (and Bill James) wrong?

Robert,

I've never run a simulation, but I'm sure that I'll be able to figure it out eventually. Any suggested reading material to get me started?

http://economics.about.com
You could just run a simulation using Diamond Mind Baseball. Problem is that it's somewhat expensive.

When I run quick and simple simulations for work, I use Solver for Excel. The student version is pretty cheap, but it would probably be pretty difficult to set up a decent baseball sim using it.

Mike

It might cut the difference to 7 or 8 Win Shares, which isn't a cake walk in my book. This question isn't worth pursuing in my opinion: I've already stated that Bonds was the most valuable in 2002.