The Mid-Season Awards.

After reading Stark's article I had to put my own opinion on this. AL MVP of the first half: Alex Rodriguez. When you think about the words most valuable, you should think how bad would this team do if this guy wasn't on there team? Well the Yankees are sucking right now even with the MLB home run and RBI leader, just try to picture how bad they would do without A-Rod. An injured Giambi, an Abreu batting .259, a Derek Jeter who has nobody to hit him in, a Hideki Matsui who wouldn't have anybody to hit in. Without Rodriguez you would just have Jeter batting like he always does, and then Jorge Posada choking in his new lineup position because he could never successfully bat third in any lineup. There is no question that the Yankees are doing bad right now, yet I don't even want to imagine how disgusting they would be right now without A-Rod to have a 80+ rbi first half. Not to mention if you took Ordonez off the Tigers, the Tigers would still be around .500 because of the late mid season production of Sheffield, their pitching staff, and the out of nowhere success of Polanco and Guillen. The Tigers would at least be .500 without Maggs. Don't joke me as an avid Tigers fan I know we need Magglio to win the AL Central, but the Tigers would not be half as bad without Magglio, as the Yankees would without A-Rod. NL MVP of the first half: Matt Holliday. Yes I agree with Stark on this one, the Rockies would be no where near .500 without Holliday. I have to say the Rockies would have a decent lineup without Holliday: Hawpe, Helton, Taveras. Yet Helton would need to produce, and Hawpe is one of those guys that cannot lead a team because he's never done it before. Helton is just doing sub-par, and Taveras cannot drive in any runs. Not to mention the Rockies don't have the best pitching staff, they only have one starter in the top 30 for ERA and that is Jeff Francis and he was a surprise this season. Without question the Rockies are the team in the National League that would suck most without this guy, were talking worse than the Giants. AL LVP of the first half: Julio Lugo. Another agreement on my behalf, props to Stark on this one. The .198 batting average, the 0-33 catastrophy, the terrible defense, the .089 average in june, this guy is a plague on his team. In fact I think Boston would be over .650 if this guy was just released and never thought of again. He could easily be a productive member to the team. Everyone knows how easy it is to get runs in the first lineup spot for the Red Sox. In fact if this guy batted over .250, yet weighed 400 pounds and had a twenty minute mile, he'd still get 100+ runs in that position. Yet he has to suck it up and never get on base. The Red Sox arguably have the best 2,3, and 4 lineup spots in baseball, yet Lugo just has to be the worse starting player in the league to screw over the extra 2 runs he could get by batting .250. This is an easy answer. NL LVP of the first half: Jacque Jones. Well let's compare his stats in homers and rbi's to Pat Burrells. Jones- 2 homers and 23 rbi's. Pat Burells- 11 homers and 37 rbi's. Burrell obviously contributes more to his team even though he has a lower batting average than Jones. Not to mention when the Cubs need Jones to produce the most he blanks out and doesn't do anything. If Jones keeps going at the rate he is going he might not even have half of the RBI's that he ended up with last year. AL Cy Young of the first half: Dan Haren. Well this is actually pretty damn easy. Going 10-3 for the first half, allowing only 2 earned runs on average in his starts, and clearing the 100 strikeout mark, Haren is the obvious choice for this. Haren makes a bold statement because we haven't seen him as much as we have seen Sabathia/Beckett/Santana. If he started 16 games like Santana did, Haren would easily have more strikeouts and wins than him or any of his predecessors. He also tops off anybody else in the American League because he has the balls to where that beard out onto the field. NL Cy Young of the first half: Jake Peavy. This man has been more than impressive in his first half outing. He leads the NL in strikeouts with 125, he has a better ERA than Penny, and has given up less earned runs than Penny even though he has pitched one more game. He noticeably slowed down in his last few games of the first half, but he was unstoppable in the earlier part of the first half going unbeaten in the month of May. Peavy's 3 losses compared to Penny's 1 loss looks bad on the record, but look at the Padres lineup it is filled with nobodies. For God sakes there RBI leader is Adrian Gonzalez. Although I cannot make much of an argument on how bad there lineup is, after all the Padres are first place in their division. Either way Peavy has impressed me the most so far in this half of the season. AL Cy Yuk of the first half: Edwin Jackson. Yeah I've never heard of this guy before either until I looked in the loss column. The guy is 1-9 so far, with a 7.23 ERA, not to mention he ranks in the top 10 in the league in most base on balls and most earned runs. Vincent Padilla can make the same claim, but he does not have that near 1 extra earned run per inning on his resume. NL Cy Yuk of the first half: Kip Wells. Well the Cardinals sucked this much last year but luckily they were in the worst division in the whole MLB. Another possible runner up his Wells teammate Anthony Reyes. But Wells has sucked more so far. Going 3-11 in the first half with a 5.92 ERA, again ranking in the top 10 for base on balls and most earned runs. The only reason he hasn't given up more earned runs and BB's is because he doesn't usually pitch for more than 5 innings. Hell if he pitched for any more innings the Cardinals would probably have a worse record than the Pittsburgh Pirates A.K.A. the usual bottom dwellers of the worst division in the league. AL Rookie of the first half: Hideki Okajima. I would love to give this award to Matsuzaka but Matsuzaka did not have a .83 era in the first 43 innings he pitched (the amount of innings Okajima has pitched so far). Okajima could easily be as good as Papelbon in the close job for Boston, but Papelbon has got that job locked. Hideki's first half has been nothing short of extraordinary with only 1 home run given up so far in his MLB career. It is very hard giving the rookie of the year to a middle reliever, but not even my favorite MR Zumaya was this impressive in the first half of last year. NL Rookie of the first half: Hunter Pence. Yes, yes Jayson Stark was right again on this one but it is hard to turn your head on a .342 batting average. When you can get even a .1 higher batting average than the possible MVP of the year it is impressive, and it makes it even more impressive that he is a rookie. Not to mention he's got some wheels, note the 6 triples on the year.