So, here's something you may not be aware of: Major League Baseball's award season does not actually end with the naming of the Most Valuable Players on Thursday.
Nope. Not anymore. On Friday evening, baseball will take a page out of Monty Python and try something completely different with the MLB Esurance Awards.
This is a new idea that baseball only announced in mid-September. The Esurance MLB Awards are meant to be a bit more fun and playful than the four major awards, as baseball asked voters to vote on things like top highlights, moments and social media topics in addition to the top players and bosses from the 2015 season. For each category, there was a range of finalists to choose from.
We know that the voting closed on November 13, and that it was carried out by media members, front office personnel, retired MLB players, members of the Society for American Baseball Research and, last but not least, fans. But because that's a pretty wide range of voters, there's really no telling who (and what) the awards are going to go to when they're revealed on MLB Network at 8 p.m. ET on Friday.
But in the interests of might-as-wellery and what-the-heckery, let's take a run through the awards anyway and venture our best guesses.
Best Players and Bosses
Best Major Leaguer: Bryce Harper, Washington Nationals
Best Everyday Player: Bryce Harper, Washington Nationals
Best Starting Pitcher: Jake Arrieta, Chicago Cubs
Best Rookie: Kris Bryant, Chicago Cubs
Best Defensive Player: Kevin Kiermaier, Tampa Bay Rays
Best Breakout Player: Xander Bogaerts, Boston Red Sox
Best Bounceback Player: Matt Harvey, New York Mets
Best Major Leaguer, Postseason: Wade Davis, Kansas City Royals
Best Manager: Ned Yost, Kansas City Royals
Best Executive: Dayton Moore, Kansas City Royals
If we can assume that the voters were watching the same baseball season we were, then some of these awards are easy calls. That certainly goes for the first two, as it's hard to imagine how Bryce Harper could lose either the Best Major Leaguer or the Best Everyday Player award.
Harper is up against some stiff competition, to be sure, including Mike Trout, who had another Mike Trout-y season. But in 2015, Harper was to hitting baseballs what Jimi Hendrix was to plucking guitar strings in the late '60s. All he did was hit .330 with 42 home runs, and he also led MLB in on-base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS. After all that, here's guessing there aren't enough Jonathan Papelbons in the world to deny him his just desserts.
The Best Rookie award is also probably a one-horse race. AL Rookie of the Year Carlos Correa was awesome, but National League Rookie of the Year Kris Bryant was even better in OPS'ing .858 with 26 homers to lead all rookies.
And yeah, Bryant also deserves bonus points for hitting the longest dinger of 2015.
The toughest category is probably Best Starting Pitcher, where you can find Zack Greinke and his 1.66 ERA, Clayton Kershaw and his 301 strikeouts and Jacob deGrom with his awesome regular-season and postseason performances.
But NL Cy Young winner Jake Arrieta is the likely favorite. He dominated in every which way in posting 22 wins and a 1.77 ERA, and he had us all amazed when he went full god mode in the second half.
Elsewhere, Xander Boagerts should benefit from being one of the only players in the Breakout Player category who wasn't already good before 2015. Alex Rodriguez should win Bounceback Player, but that would require people to actually like him. As such, things lean toward fellow New York standout/Batman wannabe Matt Harvey. And in a year where there wasn't much sustained postseason dominance, it stands out that Wade Davis struck out 18 in 10.2 scoreless innings.
The one award that could probably go to anyone is the Best Defensive Player, but it's hard to bet against Kevin Kiermaier. He robbed about a million hits with his play in center field throughout 2015, and it's hard to wrap one's head around the fact that one of his throws was clocked at 100 miles per hour:
Rounding things out are Best Manager and Best Executive. The former could go to either of the Manager of the Year winners, Texas Rangers skipper Jeff Banister and Chicago Cubs skipper Joe Maddon, and one can imagine the latter going to Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein, Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow or now-former Toronto Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos.
The advantage that Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost and general manager Dayton Moore have, however, is that the voting for these awards extended beyond the conclusion of the postseason. Winning the World Series tends to boost one's reputation, you know.
Anyway, that takes care of this particular section of the awards. Let us now get into the fun stuff, beginning with the top highlights of 2015.
Best Highlights
Best Play, Offense: Jose Bautista's Huge ALDS Home Run
Best Play, Defense: Josh Donaldson Goes Flying Into the Stands
Best Moment: Todd Frazier's Home Run Derby Walk-Off
Best Performance: Max Scherzer's Second No-Hitter
Best Call, TV: Len Kasper on Kris Bryant
Best Call, Radio: Greg Brown on Andrew McCutchen
Full disclosure: I had no idea how to pick winners for these categories from an objective viewpoint. So instead, I went full gonzo and said, "Screw it! [Thing X] was awesome, so I hope it wins [Award Y]."
Even then, only one of these was an easy call. That would be Max Scherzer's October 3 no-hitter against the New York Mets, in which he struck out 17 and walked nobody. In addition to being the better of the two no-hitters he threw in 2015, it was the best performance of 2015 and one of the best pitching performances of all time, period.
All the others were tough, but it's hard to deny Todd Frazier and Josh Donaldson for Best Moment and Best Play, Defense. The 2015 Home Run Derby was the most exciting derby in years, and it ended on an awesome note when Frazier, the hometown hero, won it on a walk-off. And of all the great defensive plays that occurred throughout 2015, Donaldson's is the most likely to have lasting power.
Because, seriously, the Son of Donald made Derek Jeter's 2004 catch look like a chump:
Can you think of any truly memorable calls from 2015? As in, anything along the lines of Vin Scully's "In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!" for Kirk Gibson in 1988?
Yeah, me neither. But Len Kasper had an awesome in-the-moment call for Bryant's first career walk-off homer, and Greg Brown decided that overkill is underrated when he responded to Andrew McCuchen's 14th-inning walk-off against the St. Louis Cardinals in July by shouting: "You can raise the Jolly Roger, and call it maybe the best all time in Pittsburgh! What a game!"
This brings us to the year's Best Play, Offense, where there were a lot of good ones to choose from. In addition to Bryant's and McCutchen's walk-offs, there was Alex Gordon's game-tying homer off Jeurys Familia in Game 1 of the World Series and Kyle Schwarber's Schwarberian clout in Game 4 of the NLDS.
But of all the big offensive plays of the 2015 season, it's hard to beat Joey Bats' earth-shaking home run in Game 5 of the American League Division Series:
This play. THIS. PLAY. Let's break it down:
- Huge Moment: Check
- Huge Dinger: Check
- Crowd Going Crazy: Check
- Legendary Bat Flip: Check
Yup, methinks Bautista's home run is one we're going to be talking about for a long time.
In fact, we're not even finished talking about it in this space.
Fan Experience
Best Social Media Personality: David Price
Best Social Media Post: #MiniBautista
Best Trending Topic: Ichiro Takes the Mound
Best MLB Interview: Josh Collmenter's Travelling Hands
Best Celebrity Fan: Jerry Seinfeld
Best Video Board Moment: Vin Scully's Return
Best Fan Catch: The Trout Net
Best Player-Fan Interaction: Andrew McCutchen Is the Best
As we discussed, there are many layers of awesome to Bautista's huge Game 5 dinger. One that didn't emerge until after the fact, however, was what was going on in the left field stands at the time.
Right before the crack of the bat, a young Joey Bats lookalike created social media gold:
That young man is named Oscar Wood, and his perfectly timed Joey Bats impression is an easy choice for Best Social Media Post. Yes, even better than Dee Gordon calling Giancarlo Stanton out on his facepalm-worthy Kit Kat game.
Elsewhere in the topic of social media, it's a sham that none of the choices for Best Trending Topic had anything to do with Bartolo Colon doing, well, anything. But Ichiro Suzuki pitching was a good one, as the surrealness of a future Hall of Famer toeing the slab was not lost on the Twitterverse.
As for baseball's Best Social Media Personality, you can take your pick. The Cubs probably have the best of MLB's 30 Twitter accounts, and Chris Archer and Marcus Stroman are two of the Philosopher Kings of baseball Twitter.
But it's hard to beat David Price. The ace left-hander is probably the most active and the most open MLB player on Twitter, and he can have fun with everything from video game squabbles to, um, poots. Also, it's because of his Twitter account that most everyone wants their own Astro:
You can take your pick with most of the other categories, too, but I'll stand by my picks.
Gio Gonzalez playing the "meow game" and Stephen Vogt's Matt Foley impression were great, but the originality of Josh Collmenter's and Trevor Cahill's "travelling hands" gimmick (see above) is worthy of a Best MLB Interview award.
Most celebrity fans are lame, but Jerry Seinfeld deserves the Best Celebrity Fan award based on his Yoenis Cespedes tweet alone. As for Best Video Board Moment, the announcement of Scully's return wins pretty much by default. For Best Player-Fan Interaction, nothing warms the heart like McCutchen making the day of two young superfans.
You're free to argue all these, but there's no arguing the winner for Best Fan Catch. After all, this cannot be beaten:
Was there a high degree of difficulty on that catch? No, not really.
But, come on. If C-3PO had accompanied the guy with the Trout Net to the game, he would have told him he had a higher probability of successfully navigating an asteroid field than of actually catching a dinger off Trout's bat. Much less a grand slam.
Anyway, that does it for me telling you who will/should win the Esurance MLB Awards. We'll find out the actual winners on Friday night, when watching MLB do something original could actually be fun.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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