The "Most Baddest Dude" Award and Other Notes

Clint Hurdle, on what Don Baylor used to use as his criteria for MVP:

"Back when Don was managing the club," said Hurdle, who was Baylor's hitting coach in 1997-1998, "and we had conversations, the MVP was the baddest dude in the league."

Hurdle claims that to be Matt Holliday. Well, I suppose at some point in his life someone was going to refer to a guy who looks like Matt Holliday as "bad," but if Hurdle really wants to go by the Baylor criteria, how can anyone other than Pujols ever be the MVP?

I don't usually trot out random notes, but it's been a busy freaking day on the legal side of Shyster's ledger, so that's all I can really muster at the moment:

A fellow you may have heard of, goes by the name Rodriguez, won the MVP award. It wasn't unanimous, however, with two Detroit area voters penciling in Magglio in as their number one choice. There has been some squawking about this -- and I admit that it looks bad that Magglio's only first place votes came from his hometown press corps., but they're not the silliest two homer votes ever. And no, I don't vote for Magglio if I had the franchise, but the guy did bat over .360 in a tough hitters' park. No one will care about this tomorrow.

Mike Lowell stays with Boston. That scraping sound you heard the other day was Mike Lowell crawling back to Boston after A-Rod went back to Yankees, leaving him with no one who was going to offer him that much more than Boston did. But even without that fourth year he wanted, this makes total sense for Lowell. He rakes in Fenway (.993 OPS at home/.773 on the road in 2007).

The Angels get John Garland in exchange for Orlando Cabrera. Cabrera is a gold glove shortstop who hit .300 last year, but at age 32, that probably represents his absolute ceiling. Garland is a consistently above-average 28 year-old starter who rarely misses a turn. On its face that makes Garland more valuable in my mind, but when you consider that having him around allows the Angels to trade some pitching for a bat -- like the better Cabrera -- one has to think that the Angels did far more to improve their team with this trade than the White Sox did.

The Mets sign Luis Castillo to a four year deal. See, not everyone is using the Mets to pump up their price for another team. No word yet on whether New York is going to use him in the rotation.