by Jim Dandy

We’re at the All-Star break now, and I’ve got a handful of trophies for the good, the bad, and the really, ridiculously hideous from the first half of the season.

Most Valuable Player

American League
Candidates: Manny Ramirez, Brian Roberts, Vladimir Guerrero, Miguel Tejada, Mark Texira

Texira gets eliminated automatically for disappointing his country in the Home Run Derby. Shameful. Tejada is having a great statistical season, but he splits the votes with Roberts (more will be said of him later), and the Orioles recent fade isn’t helping either of their causes. So it comes down to Manny and Vlad. Let’s go point by point.
Crazy Hair: wash.
Violence of Swing: Vlad
Ability to hit absolute garbage: Vlad
Aloofness: Manny by a country mile
Stats: Tough one. Manny’s played more games, so it has to go to him.
Team impact: Insane to judge, but I’ll try. In Sox wins (hat tip to Buster Olney), Manny’s hitting .335, with 18 homers, and 54 RBI. In Boston losses, he’s hitting .194 with four homers and 23 RBI. On the other hand, we have Vlad, whose Angels were decent without him, barely clinging to a lead over the Rangers in the AL West. Vlad comes back, and the Angels are now starting to walk away from the pack. Guy hit .440 in June, and the Angels are still my pick to win it all, so it goes to Guerrero.

National League
Candidates: Derrek Lee, Albert Pujols, Andruw Jones, Dontrelle Willis
Willis can’t win because he’s a pitcher, and the MVP voters are mildly retarded. He and Jones are in the same boat, though—their performances have essentially been carrying mediocre (even high-mediocre) teams. Everybody on the Braves has been hurt for some period of time this year, from Tim Hudson and Chipper Jones all the way down to their Assistant to the Traveling Secretary, who missed some time with a strained quad earlier this year. Willis, well, you’ll see later. So we’re left with Lee and Pujols. Let’s break it down again.
Minutiae: Derrek Lee plays for the Cubs, so he’s surrounded with interesting little tidbits of information, but Pujols wins EASILY with this info from his ESPN.com bio: "Pronounced: POO-holes" That’s almost enough to give him the MVP right there.
Team Performance: The Cards are the best team in the NL, and the only team there who can really contend for a World Series title. The Cubs are fading fast.
Stats: Lee leads the league in every statistical category, making up for the ground he lost to Poo-Holes in the minutiae category.
Prior awards: Pujols has the MVP of his class-A league, NL Rookie of the Year, and would have been MVP the last 3 years except for that guy Barry Bonds. Lee has a Gold Glove.

Since Pujols has a record of continued success, almost assuring him of a future MVP award, I’m giving it to Derrek Lee.

Cy Young

American League
Candidates: Roy Halladay, Jon Garland, Matt Clement, Mark Buehrle
Kenny Rogers would be in here, but there was that whole thing with the stuff and the guy. You know what I’m talking about. That dude. And the thing he did.

Halladay gets eliminated because he plays for Toronto. Whatever. Shut up. Seriously, his knee injury is going to hurt his standing for this. Clement is eliminated because while he’s been great, he just doesn’t have that Cy Young feel to him. Garland and Buehrle would probably split the votes in a final tally, but I really think one of them is going to end up with it. And I’m fairly confident it’s going to be Buehrle. He’s been one of the most underrated pitchers in the American League for the last 5 years—consistently giving the White Sox 15-20 wins every year, no matter how crappy their team has been. Well, now they’re good, and Mark (I’m tired of writing out that last name) should be recognized for being their ace.

National League
Candidates: Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt, Dontrelle Willis, Pedro Martinez, Livan Hernandez
What a lineup. This is going to be a very difficult award to hand out. Clemens immediately gets crossed out because he’s the offspring of the fallen angel Lucifer, the forked-tongue backstabbing piece of crap. Livan Hernandez, while he’s having a great year for a sleeper team, just doesn’t have the numbers.

As for the remaining three, all three are in the top 5 in the National League in Wins and ERA, and Willis is one inning shy of putting all three in the top 5 in innings pitched. Pedro leads the NL in strikeouts, with Willis and Oswalt tied for 12th, while Oswalt leads all non-Satanic National League pitchers in ERA and Willis is tied for the league lead in wins. How the hell do you choose between the three? The only way I can see is team impact.

Pedro is the anchor of the Mets rotation. Without him, the Mets would be terrible. As it stands now, though, they’re still only mediocre.
Oswalt has been fighting to pull his team out of the depths of the NL Central cellar, and has them competing again, but there’s that issue of his demon teammate.
Willis wins, because the Marlins are still contending for both the wild card and the NL East division crown, and he’s got very little else on his team going for him right now.

Best Reliever

American League
Candidates: Joe Nathan, Mariano Rivera, Dustin Hermanson, Francisco Rodriguez
Rivera hasn’t given up a run to anyone but the Red Sox this year, apparently, but I’m still going to give it to Nathan. Joe Nathan has been one of the 2 or 3 best closers in the game for the last several years, and he always gets overlooked for awards. So despite Rivera’s continued awesomeness, Nathan.

National League
Candidates: Jason Isringhausen, Brad Lidge, Derrek Turnbow, Chad Cordero
Isringhausen is continued excellence, Lidge is the up and coming flamethrower, and Derrek Turnbow from the Brewers is Jeff Spiccoli.
Chad Cordero is the one guy you can single out, one big reason for the Nationals’ success. He’s got 31 saves in 34 opportunities—nearly automatic. That’s how the Nationals can be 16 games over .500 and yet be outscored by opponents.

Rookie of the Year

American League
Candidates: Gustavo Chacin, Huston Street, Nick Swisher
For me, this is all about two people—Chacin and Street. Chacin had a great great first quarter, but the Jays have been kind of stumbling along, not doing much of anything. The A’s have shown some life in the AL West, and coincidentally enough, all it took was Octavio Dotel going to the DL for the season for them to start winning. Huston Street stepped in and was an immediate and dramatic upgrade for the A’s. He wins.

National League
Candidates: Yhency Brazoban, Clint Barmes, Ryan Church
It says something that Barmes has been out for like, a month and a half and he’s still the fifth best player available in my fantasy league. One skill he must learn is patience in the face of slow moving elevators when hauling several tens of pounds of deer meet into his apartment building.

Managers of the Year:

There’s very little competition for these awards, not because there have been loads of crap managers, but because 2 really stand out. Ozzie Guillen for the White Sox and Frank Robinson of the Nationals have their teams playing out of their trees, and it looks to stay that way all year. Bobby Cox certainly enters into the discussion, because this year’s Braves have suffered through some pretty ridiculous injury problems, but I can’t in good conscience not recognize Guillen and Robinson.

Surprise Player

American League
Candidates: Brian Roberts, Jon Garland
Garland’s been nothing before this year, but every report has Mark Buehrle playing a huge role in his development (working quickly, getting into a groove, and trusting his catcher). Brian Roberts had 50some doubles last year, and his power production this year has been because he increased his strength enough to turn half those doubles into home runs. So because you could see a progression leading to Roberts’ breakout this year, and Garland came out of nowhere, I’m giving it to Garland.

National League
Candidates: Derrek Lee, Livan Hernandez
Livan’s not really a surprise—he’s been a consistently good pitcher who’s been put in a no-pressure situation where he can be an ace again. Lee, however, is having a monster season in statistical categories he just shouldn’t be (batting average being the most notable—he’s a career .266 hitter who’s hitting .378 this year). Lee wins.

Surprise Teams

I figured I’d knock both out without separating them, because hands down it’s the Nationals and White Sox again.

Now the fun really starts. The “Crappies”:

Least Valuable Player

American League
Up until last week, it would have been Jason “Mysterious Pituitary Gland Growth” Giambi, but he’s on fire right now and carrying the Yanks, and the local media is all up in his Kool-Aid, so whatever. I’ve also seen people listing Juan Gonzalez (Juan Gone—excellent nickname. It still applies!), but really, how dumb are you to have expected anything from him this year? He’s played a grand total of what, 2 games in the last 3 years? The Indians took a flier on him for crap money. If he produced, he would have been a pleasant surprise. As it stands, they’re only out nothing (I’m sure they had insurance), and you get sportswriters with their panties in a bunch over a superstar who even injured has more skills than their dumpy asses ever had (always enjoyable to the fans). Win-win where I’m sitting. For me, this year’s LVP is head and shoulders above the crowd. It’s Slumpin Sammy Sosa. Ever since they took his cork AND his juice, he’s been nothing, but nostalgia keeps getting him paid.

National League
Up yours, Mike Lowell. Keep making me look bad, and there’s going to be hell to pay.

Crap Pitcher

American League
David Wells gets honorable mention for comparing a sleazy cameraman doing his job to a rapist. And also for sucking. The entire Royals organization too garners honorable mention, but pointing out that the Royals suck is like giving Barry Bonds the MVP when he plays a full season at this point. So the big winner is Dewon Brazelton, the “future ace” of the Devil Rays. I’ll let Mark Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times take it from here:
“Dewon Brazelton. Eight losses, a 6.84 ERA…[then] went AWOL for three weeks after being demoted to Triple A with no explanation, though manager Lou Piniella said the specifics were ‘between the team psychologist and whomever.’"

National League Crap Pitcher AND Worst Free Agent Acquisition

We have a dual winner! Eric “Whiplash” Milton! If 66 home runs in a season and an unintelligible tourism commercial for the Dominican Republic by Sammy Sosa is enough to win him nostalgia contracts, then I think we can award a bonus “lifetime achievement Crappie” goes to whatever genius in the Reds’ front office decided bringing in a gopher-ball prone pitcher to a homer-friendly ballpark was a good idea.

Worst Manager

Sweet Lou Pinella is the first manager in my lifetime to ever openly campaign to get fired. At least Larry Brown has the decency to play intricate PR games with the Pistons. Take a bow, Sweet Lou. And leave first base right where it is.

Surprise Crap

American League Player:
Honorable mention go to Brett Boone (the tearful goodbye keeps him off the top of the list) and Keith Foulke (who we now find out was injured all season). The winner of this Crappie is…

Johan Santana.

Santana, you say? Why would you put last year’s Cy Young winner on the list, Jim? He leads the AL in strikeouts! You crazy.

I know he seems like he doesn’t belong on here, but with last year raising his expectations so high, 7-5 with a nearly 4 ERA (high-level mediocrity, basically) is a disappointment. Foulke, after last October, has been shockingly terrible. And Boone is what, 2 years removed from being one of the top 2nd basemen in the game? But Foulke was bound to drop off, and Boone was already sliding down. Santana was expected to continue his lights-out performances, maybe unfairly, but still.

American League Team:
Tampa’s disappointing, but they sucked anyway. It just sucks that they’re not really making any forward progress. Cleveland was supposed to compete, and they’re starting to now. The winner is probably Seattle, being more disappointing because of all the money they spent. Not much snark for them, though. They have young pitching progressing (not quickly enough for some, but still) and old pitching on their way out the door, but no one expected them to be this bad after all the money they spent.

National League Player:
We’ve got Danny Kolb, the flash-in-the-pan ex-closer from Milwaukee, now in Atlanta, who has absolutely BOMBED. We also have Corey Patterson and Austin Kearns, two “rising stars” who’re now freefalling through the Cubs’ and Reds’ respective farm systems. But the winner, for me, has to be Barry Bonds. His half-assedness led to him being out MUCH longer than he should be, and his personal vendetta against Pedro Gomez (why the hell does ESPN keep him out there, anyway?) has gone so far that I half expect Bonds to walk up to Gomez at his next press conference and just start mushroom slapping the guy.

National League Team:
It’s a tie between the Marlins and the top of the National League West. The Marlins’ pitching has been so good, but their hitting has been soooooooooooooo bad. They should be winning the division, and it’s their own fault that theyr’re not. The NL West looks like a geriatric orgy—limp and messy.