the only way to judge defense is by looking at errors and fielding percentage. it’s clear that elvis is the worst defensive shortstop.

duh

For the record, my first-place vote went to Andrus in my network’s ROY award voting.

“it isn’t about defense”

and then makes the point that it isn’t about offense (which it clearly wasn’t), then what is he actually thinking? Is he thinking conspiracy? Some sort of Texas bias (that would be the first)? He clearly knows it is about defense but it’s like he can’t really write the article if he says that so he has to just cite errors and say “it isn’t about defense.” Right? I wonder if he’s just really flummoxed and questioning the world around him.

…they know that every year they think Michael Young is one of the best players in the league. That alone should make people skeptical of player voting for anything.

I bet he’s never seen Elvis play outside of when Texas played the White Sox.

A writer writing about other writers who don’t know what they write about.

Well, at least he proved his point that writers shouldn’t vote on these awards.

He says to tell that boob in Chicago to stop stealing his bit.

The last resort of the unfulfilled. If you can’t get attention any other way, espouse a cause that has little merit and rant about it. Chicago is a great city, well except for its’ politics, its’ weather, its’ population density, and the kind of insanity that cold weather regions generally exhibit. See? Then you can write an editorial that the best thing that ever came out of Chicago is an empty truck, and although a few million people will disagree, you’ve stirred the pot and generated response. That Beckham was included in the voting at all is a kind of honor, and baseball is better off that there were six or eight legit candidates for rookie of the year – as vaporous as that reward has traditionally been.

is it his contention that Andrus is a subpar defender?

trusting the opinion of a major league player or that of a ‘’baseball writer’’ – and that term includes sports editors, columnists, general-assignment reporters and retired journalists who rarely, if ever, get to a major league ballpark

I bet he’d love to have Elvis on his team.

WWII in HD.

Check it out, history buffs.

in that story to mention but it cracks me up that he can in one sentence praise Bailey as the correct choice, then in the next sentence huff about Beckham not getting any first place votes.

And to cite the players as better arbiters of performance is also faulty. These guys don’t get a chance to see what the rest of the league does in any comprehensive way because guess what – they sort of have a job that gets in the way. The few times a year they get to see a guy is scarcely informative and Im guessing they are focusing on the game at hand rather than trying to parse the difference in defensive range between a given player on the field and some guy who plays a different position on a team they faced months ago. This is not to say the BBWAA has the greatest track record (Ted Williams was left off of 20 HoF ballots!), but Id hardly give the players credit for being better selectors.