There’s gonna be more in the coming days, but JV was named the Players Choice Player of the Year for 2011. Besides having the most confusing name, this award is the top award bestowed by an all player vote, and produced for the MLB Network during a slow content period.
It’s not the Cy Young or MVP, but it is setting a nice precedent.
In case you missed it, Alex Avila won his first ever Silver Slugger award, while Cabby got edged out by Adrian Gonzalez, despite the fact that Cabby had a higher slugging percentage, more runs, more doubles, more HR, higher BA, higher OPS, more walks, less strikeouts, etc. Basically, Cabrera had an edge in every category that defines “slugger.” Gonzalez did have 12 more RBIs, but it helps when you have Jacob Ellsbury and his 119 runs ahead of you. Some guy posited that maybe the players and coaches (who vote on Silver Slugger awards) didn’t like Cabrera’s offseason activities. This guy was so outraged that he used a curse word (a no-no on DTW) and some fancy sabermetric stats to show how ridiculous choosing Gonzales over Cabrera really was.
The Tigers came up empty in the gold glove department.
AL Cy Young will be announced Nov 18th, MVP on Nov 22nd.
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