Good Job, BBWAA

Whaddaya know? All six of my picks to win the major end-of-year MLB awards won them. And these weren't predictive picks, mind you, these were on-the-merits picks. That would seem to imply that I think the Baseball Writers Association of America did a pretty good job in picking the winners. And I do, although I also think that it is a problem Mike Trout didn't win the AL MVP either of the last two years, given that he was unambiguously the best player in baseball in each of them. My personal feeling is that Cabrera deserved both of the awards, not because he was on a playoff team or had higher RBI totals or whatever, but because he (a) won the Triple Crown, and then (b) led Major League Baseball in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage all at once, and both of those feats are just kind of trump cards to me, or at least they put an extremely high burden on the case for any other contender. When someone is that offensively dominant, I'm gonna be inclined to give it to them, even though I would also be quite eager in another year to recognize the value of a gifted defensive shortstop or center fielder or catcher who can also hit pretty well. The situation the last two years in the A.L. has been a tough one, and I kind of hope that Trout does his thing again next year and Cabrera goes back to being just really good instead of ungodly, so that they can just give it to Trout already and the argument can stop. But overall I do think they got the awards pretty much right, which doesn't always happen, so good for them.