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John/z28jdI couldnt rate Ichiro any higher than Jay for the simple reason is hes purely a singles hitter.Yes he had a great season but almost all of his hits were singles,he slaps at the ball as hes running towards first,a very effective style thats enhanced by his speed.If he led the league in runs scored then id give him alot more consideration but he was tied for 34th in the majors in that stat.Like i said earlier with Bonds i consider OPS to be a very important measure of a player and eventho Ichiro led the majors in batting which gives you a good head start on OPS he finished just out of the top 40 in baseball.Basically proving the fact hes a good singles hitter on a bad team and his speed didnt help him enough to help his team score more runs because he was always on first base.
Guerrero meanwhile carried a team with numerous injuries to the playoffs so eventho you dont want to automatically give it to a guy on a winning team in his case it has to count for something.He had 250 combined runs/rbi's,and his on base percent was just a little behind Ichiro's.I'd much rather have a guy who hit .337 with lots of power rather than a guy who hit .370 with none.Vlad also had more total bases with his 56 less hits and more walks with his 92 less at-bats.Vlad is also one of the few peoples who Ichiro's defense/speed doesnt help him against. They probably have the 2 best arms in the league and Guerrero's already put up two 36 steal seasons which Ichiro did this year with all those times on base. Vlad is just too valuable to have him running all the time but he still stole 15 in 18 tries anyway,a much higher success rate.
Ichiro had a great season but i hope no one considers his season on par with Sislers 1920 season just because he had more hits
Manager of the year should go to Cox in the NL,his team was thought to be done and Scoscia in the AL because of all the injuries and the tough division.Torre is hurt by being in a division with Baltimore,Toronto and Tampa Bay which were all subpar teams and having 190 million dollars worth of players.Its kind of tough to screw that up with such odds in his favor.I dont know any manager that could start a season with 12 potential all-stars and not win 101 games.They wouldve had to win at least another 10-15 for me to consider him just for the fact anything less than 100 wins couldve been considered a disappointment.
Garner is hurt in the NL because he wasnt there half the year but hes helped because he joined a team that shouldve been playing much better.Larussa should be helped by the fact that his pitching staff wasnt the best to start the year and most people picked them to finish 3rd behind the Cubs and Astros but i still like Bobby Cox as my choice.
PS NL ROY better go to Jason Bay of the Pirates,over Khalil Greene of the Padres who is ESPNs poster boy but obviously didnt produce as much as Bay.Greene wasnt even the best rookie on his team,Akinora Otsuka was who put up unreal stats out of the bullpen in 72 games