Once again, it's Baseball Bloggers Alliance award season! It's a lot like the BBWAA award season, just with different names because they litigious with their free time. The fine staff here at Off Base will guide you through our ballots over the next few days. Next, up the Goose Gossage Award for this year's top reliever or, as I like to call it, the finding a reason to not give the best reliever of the year award to a closer award.
A few years ago, we had the year of the pitcher. Then we had another year of the pitcher, then another, and now another. I believe it is safe to assume that we are securely in the middle of the decade of the pitcher. Or at least the decade of the pitcher relative to the type of offense being displayed in this day in age compared to decades of the pitchers when offense was hard to come by and weak hitters like Maury Wills were championed as being offensive superstars. It doesn't make the position any less volatile due to injury (especially in the case of relievers), but with exceptional performances year-in and year-out from mound-dwelling sphere-hurlers, we should no longer be surprised by some of the gaudy numbers we see on a yearly basis from pitchers. Appreciative? Absolutely. Surprised? No.
