ROTY Commentary

Congratulations go out to Evan Longoria and Geovany Soto for picking up Rookie of the Year honors. Both were fairly easy to call, but there was still a lot to discuss in the voting.

I fully expected Longoria to win, but I did not expect it to be unanimous. I figured Alexei Ramirez would garner a handful of first place votes, especially from Chicago writers. I mean Fukodome got a second place vote on a national league ballot, but a guy who actually performed well this year can't get a first? Ridiculous. I'm glad to see Mike Aviles got some love, but Jacoby Ellsbury's were a bit overvalued, I think. Aviles was better statistically in every other category. Joey Devine and Brad Ziegler got some attention, too, although Devine got one second place vote and Ziegler got a third, so that may have been a California writer's ballot. Just speculation.

My Standings	Voting Results
1 Mike Aviles	1 Evan Longoria (28 1st->140 pts)
2 Denard Span	2 Alexei Ramirez (18 2nd 5 3rd->59 pts
3 Evan Longoria	3 Jacoby Ellsbury (7 2nd 5 3rd->26 pts)
4 Alexei Ramirez	4 Mike Aviles (2 2nd 3 3rd->9 pts)
5 Armando Gallaraga	5 Armando Gallaraga (9 3rd->9 pts)
6 Jacoby Ellsbury	6 Joey Devine (1 2nd->3 pts)
7 Nick Blackburn	7 Denard Span (3 3rd->3 pts)
8 Joba Chamberlain	8 Nick Blackburn, Joba Chamberlain, Brad Ziegler (1 3rd->1 pt)
9 Greg Smith
10 David Murphy

The National League is where the voters really embarrassed themselves. Geovany Soto was a good pick. I personally preferred Joey Votto, but to excel at a position as tough as catcher in your rookie year deserves recognition. The embarrassment falls on the 4th place vote-getter. Edinson Volquez picked up three second place votes despite not being a rookie. I don't really know what is more embarrassing, the fact that three "esteemed" baseball writers don't know the rookie qualifications, or that fact that they didn't give him first place votes considering he is also a dark horse candidate for the Cy Young! The fact that Kosuke Fukodome picked up two votes, one of which was a second place, yet Hiroki Kuroda garnered none is also laughable considering Fukodome was an embarrassment outside of his four hit game, while Kuroda put up a sub4 ERA!

My Standings	Voting Results
1 Joey Votto	1 Geovany Soto (31 1st 1 2nd->158 pts)
2 Geovany Soto	2 Joey Votto (1 1st 21 2nd 8 3rd->76 pts
3 Hiroki Kuroda	3 Jair Jurrjens (6 2nd 16 3rd->34 pts)
4 Jair Jurrjens	4 Edinson Volquez :( (3 2nd->9 pts)
5 Jorge Campillo	5 Jay Bruce (7 3rd->7 pts)
6 Kosuke Fukodome	6 Kosuke Fukodome (1 2nd 1 3rd->4 pts)
7 Blake DeWitt
8 Jay Bruce
9 John Lannan
10 Johnny Cueto

Trading for Holliday?

So the rumor mill is going crazy with a potential trade for the Rockies' Matt Holliday. The latest deal I have heard is Ludwick, Schumaker, and Boggs for Matt Holliday. Right away I will say that I think acquiring Holliday is awesome and I am on board as long as the deal is right, but in this case the deal is not right. I am very much against this trade. The Cardinals have holes in the middle infield, starting pitching, and left-handed relief pitching. We have about 20-30 million to cover these holes which shouldn't be that big of a problem, honestly. Trading for Holliday, however, requires us to release Ludwick, Schumaker, and Boggs' combined salaries(411,000+arbitration for Ludwick, 400,000 for Schumaker, and a minor league deal for Boggs) for one year of Matt Holliday at 13.5 million dollars. Looking at our budget as an optimistic 30 million dollars, that still eats more than a third of our budget for a position that was already covered. Not to mention, to make the trade worthwhile we will have to sign Holliday to an extenstion. This is already impossible due to Holliday being represented by Boras, notorious for frowning upon extensions. Even if we do somehow sign Holliday to an extension, it would probably be comparable, if not higher than Carlos Lee's 6 year 100 million dollar contract signed in 2007. This would require paying Holliday more than Pujols and could also cut into our ability to resign Pujols when his contract expires. Basically, the only positive to this deal is adding a hitter with a solid reputation to hit behind Pujols and clearing up a roster spot for Colby Rasmus, but at the same time you add payroll in an area that you aren't upgrading that much. While this year could have been a fluke for Ludwick, Holliday's home/away splits are hard to ignore. I think we could conceivably extend Ludwick and take a chance that he has put it all together than overpay for Holliday to give us an .803 on-base percentage(his career average away from Coors) instead of the 1.068 that he puts up in Colorado.

As far as my personal ideas for this off-season, I would suggest trading Kennedy for anything at all, moving Ankiel or Ludwick for relief help (like Kevin Gregg, Huston Street, or likewise), signing two of Felipe Lopez, Marcus Giles, or Nick Punto to play second base and shortstop, and utilizing our minor league system to fill bench spots or leftover bullpen slots.