The Pwnage Awards, Part 1

Here are the Pwnage Awards followed by my nominations:

The Better to Be Lucky than Good Award

There are always several candidates for this, but my vote goes to:

Curtis Granderson

As stated before, he's a terrible leadoff hitter. Leadoff hitter's job is to be on base as much as possible, which he sucks at doing. And batting a guy with 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 home runs, and 20 steals in the leadoff slot is stupid for obvious reasons.

Despite his terribleness as a leadoff hitter, he had a great year statistically. But is he really this good? Let's look this over:

Line Drive percentage: 21.0% (22.2% in 2006)
Home Run/Fly Ball percentage: 11.4% (12.3% in 2006)
Ground Ball percentage: 34.2% (38.9% in 2006)

Seems like he hit the ball pretty similarly to how he hit the ball last year. Let's see how he did with strikeouts and walks:

Plate Appearances per Strikeout: 4.79 PA/K (3.90 AB/K last year)
Plate Appearances per Walk: 13.00 PA/BB (10.29 PA/BB last year)

He cut down on his strikeouts, but that's nothing to congratulate him on. That's like congratulating Rosie O'Donnell for dropping 30 pounds from 350 to 320. He also was more of a free swinger this year, as he walked a good deal less frequently. Overall, I'd say he had a pretty similar year this year as he did last year. But oh wait, what?

2006
.260/.335/.438
31 2B, 9 3B, 19 HR

2007
.302/.361/.552
38 2B, 23 3B, 23 HR

Whadafuck? THT has Granderson second in the AL in PrOPS overachieving this year. Second only to his teammate Magglio Ordonez. Technically Ordonez is luckier, but Ordonez is actually a good hitter who was still good even if you took away the luck element. However, Granderson, without the luck element, he's really not much better than league average. His PrOPS last year .767 and actual OPS was .773. What was his PrOPS this year? .785, only 18 pts higher than last year and only 12 pts higher than what it actually was last year. Some guys are consistently above their projected numbers, like Jeter. He's always higher, so you can usually disregard the luck element in his PrOPS overachieving. However, with other guys it's good because it's usually correct in pointing out the lucky fucks. Granderson is very likely one of these people, which is why he gets my nomination for the "Better to Be Lucky Than Good" Award.

The He Didn't Collapse, He Just Sucks and Came Back Down to Earth Award

Jose Reyes. No question about it in my mind.

It was so sweet to see him absolutely suck Flushing nutsack as he got showered with boos in September. Here's how he did in September:

.205/.279/.333

This showboating, overrated, loafing douchebag slumping like that put a nice smile on B.A.'s face. Look at how he hit the ball this year versus last year:

Line Drive percentage: 18.5% (20.9% last year)
Home Run/Fly Ball percentage: 5.5% (10.6% last year)
Ground Ball percentage: 41.6% (45.2% last year)

Also:

Infield Fly Balls/Total Fly Balls: 13.4% (11.8% last year)

Combine all of the factors (he hit fewer groundballs, fewer line drives, more infield flies) and there you have his suckitude.

This is the future of the Mets, people. A guy who doesn't hustle on ground balls. Just takes off for 2nd or 3rd whenever he feels like it...which is all the time. A guy, whose biggest tool is his speed, that has a Ground Ball/Fly Ball ratio of 1.07. I'm sorry everybody. The guy just isn't that amazing. Halfway through this year I thought that maybe he was an excellent player, but unless he magically stops hitting pop ups and fly balls so he can use his speed more and picks up his walk rate from the first half of this past year, I don't see him being within an order of magnitude of being "one of the best players in the game". So he gets my nomination for "He Didn't Collapse, He Just Sucks and Came Back Down to Earth" Award.