A Word on Awards

You'll notice that I haven't weighed in on the Rookie of the Year or Cy Young award announcements. You'll also soon notice me not weighing in on Manager of the Year and MVP awards.

The reason for this is that, in my view, the only thing worth writing about such things are "did they deserve it" columns, and the only way to make those worth reading is to engage in some kind of objective analysis that raises the conversation above the level of mere bar argument. Beyond pointing out the bleedin' obvious things that others have said over and over again -- Sabathia pitched more innings! Braun had too many errors! -- I'm not really capable of doing such an analysis. Well, not as capable as many others who do that sort of thing much, much better than me.

More broadly speaking, the subject of who should win awards, along with a few others -- "Generic Spring Preview" and "All Star Snubs" come to mind -- fall into that category of evergreen baseball column that don't aren't really all that fun to read or to write. Sure, every baseball writer in the world writes these, but I get the sense that they do it mostly because they feel they have to, not because they're particularly inspired. Telling in this regard is that Deadspin's Will Leitch -- a guy who has done more to pick up and shake the beer can that is sports writing than anyone -- even posts these kinds of things from time to time, even if he dresses them up with his patented irreverence ("Pants Party" etc.). Even then Leitch often farms these pieces out to other people. I don't know Leitch, but I'm guessing he, like me, finds them kind of boring too.

So I probably won't be saying much about the awards. And I probably won't have a preseason predictions bit either. Well, maybe I will, but if I do it won't look much like the usual sort of preseason predictions column (I wrote a few in 2002, and they tended to go off in decidedly non-baseball tangents).

OK, between that and last night's ode to Neyer, I have written enough about myself to last a couple of months.