Mid-Season Awards: NL Edition

Yesterday Tim did his article on the AL mid-season awards. He covered the Cy Young, rookie of the year, comeback player of the year and the manager of the year. Today I will be doing the same thing but for the National League.

Midseason Awards- AL Edition

As we come into the All-Star weekend, Alex and I are going to unveil our individual picks for the usual awards: Cy Young, MVP, ROY, Comeback player, and Manager. Keep in mind, this is only for the first half of the season; this is not meant to be a prediction on who will end up winning these awards in the fall. While Alex will tackle the National League, I will be reviewing the American League, so as to not give every award to Jose Altuve (joke!). Feel free to comment/debate our picks in the comment section below. Without further ado, I humbly(ish) present my AL Midseason Awards!

Opening the Hall: Monte Irving

The Baseball Hall of Fame. It is where every player dreams of ending his career, enshrined among the best of the best. Only a select few each year enter into the small fraternity of men viewed as the greatest ever. Recently, while debating the 'small Hall' versus 'large Hall' issue (ie should the Hall of Fame be more or less exclusive than it is now) I realized that even as a diehard baseball fan, there are a lot of players in the Hall of Fame that I know little about. In an effort to grow our collective baseball knowledge, I will be starting a series of intermittent posts that will focus on different, less known players who are enshrined in the Hall but do not receive the accolades and notoriety of a Babe Ruth or Walter Johnson. If you want me to cover a certain player, please tweet me (@timnicodemus) or leave a comment in the section below. After the jump, I will discuss Monte Irvin, a truly great guy and an interesting player.

The Miami Marlins Make a Move

Yesterday the Miami Marlins agreed to a trade that would send them Houston Astro Carlos Lee in return for two of their top prospects. The Marlins were in need of a first baseman but in my opinion Lee is hardly an upgrade. As of today he's only accumulated .2 WAR through 277 plate appearances.

NL All-Star Voting-- My Picks

With the official All-Star line-ups announced, the Summer Classic is ready to go save the decision for starting pitchers. The baseball blogsphere has been inundated with opinions on the selections and the usual chorus of dissenters has surfaced. Instead of joining the throngs of writers in complaining about who got snubbed or who deserved it more, I am going to give a sabermetric view of my ballot, along with my reasoning, and compare it to reality. Alex is covered the AL side of the All-Stars, so I will do a breakdown the NL. I will go through the starters and then the reserves and the pitchers. Senior Circuit!

My All-Star Team - American League

With the All-Star rosters being announced yesterday I thought it would be fun to do my own. I used WAR as my primary deciding factor so without further ado here's my All-Star team.

Chase Headley to the Tigers Has to Happen

During the off-season the Detroit Tigers and went out and signed all-star first baseman Prince Fielder. Everyone pegged the Detroit Tigers as the team to represent the American League in the World Series, but as we head into the All-Star break that doesn't look like it will happen. The Tigers' hopes aren't over though. I believe if they make at least one critical move it could help them get right back into the mix. I believe that move has to be acquiring San Diego Padres third baseman Chase Headley. Headley is one of the more underrated players in baseball and is easily one of the biggest snubs as we head into the all-star break. He currently has 3.3 WAR and is a player that can easily make a team better. More after the jump.