BBA Awards: NL Willie Mays

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 Willie Mays Award for this year's top rookie. Or, as I like to call it, the future faces of baseball who will never get injured or have bad seasons award. 

It was quite the year for rookie ballplayers in Major League Baseball. At least, in the AL it was. In the NL...not so much. There were fast starts that led to complete faceplants, and there were late starts that led to strong finishes. But MTD (who will be supplying the AL ballot) has a much harder decision that yours truly.

BBA AL Connie Mack 2014

Once again, it's Baseball Bloggers Alliance award season! It's a lot like the BBWAA award season with different names because they get litigious with their free time. The fine staff here at Off Base will guide you through our ballots over the next few days. First up, the Connie Mack or how I learned to stop worrying about former players managing and love them bombing.

It appears there are two key ways to win the Connie Mack (cough*manageroftheyear*cough). You can manage a team that is expected to be terrible and then accidentally win 92 games and make the playoffs. Or you can manage a team that does well despite key losses and also make the playoffs. It's a good year to be Buck Showalter if you want a trophy.

1. Buck Showalter
Few had the Orioles flat out winning the AL East, let alone running away with it. The O's lost debatably talented Matt Weiters at catcher, stud youngster Manny Machado at third to injuries and Chris Davis to a suspension even though he had regressed all the way back to his Arlington days. Showalter led the team to a 96-66 record, good for second in the American League, and tied for second in baseball. I feel like it was done with a lot of smoke and mirrors as the Orioles starting staff had the 28th best FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) in MLB and the bullpen ranked 15th in FIP. Still, Zach Britton emerged as a lockdown closer. Nelson Cruz blasted 40 homers, Adam Jones did his thing and Steve Pearce was resurrected from the dead.

How much credit does Showalter deserve? Probably not much. But it was incredibly difficult trying to find a pic of him not pointing at something.

2. Terry Francona
It's not that I don't respect or care about these awards. But Manager of the Year is so hard to determine, I might have voted for Francona when he worked for ESPN one year. For example, when does a manager deserve credit for a player turning a corner? I don't know. But Corey Kluber led baseball pitchers in fWAR (Fangraphs wins above replacement) and Michael Brantley finished third in fWAR behind Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen.

3. Mike Scioscia
Leading the Angels to the best record in baseball is reason enough to make the AL ballot. But there's a little more to it in my eyes this year. The Angels scored the most runs in baseball. Scioscia actually managed the team he was given instead of forcing his small ball approach on a Jerry Dipoto built roster. It's an old dog learning new tricks scenario that must have made his skin crawl. And for that, he gets a third place vote from me. That said, Dipoto had to trade Ernesto Frieri away from the skipper to keep Frieri from serving up enough meatballs to cure world hunger.

LVM. Ron Washington
Washington resigned on Sept 5 citing personal reasons and later declared he was embarrassed after not being true to his wife of 42 years. Those are certainly his issues to deal with and I don't care to speculate any further. Finishing below the Astros in the AL West is plenty embarrassing enough.

BBA NL Connie Mack

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. First up, the Connie Mack, or, how I learned to stop agonizing over whether or not a manager really has as much control over a team's performance as I believe they do. 

What a strange season in the National League this year. 15 teams in the league, and only six finished with records better than .500. At least they made this ballot a little bit easier to fill out than the AL where you could have conceivably chosen from any number of managers to take the top spot. Not like it really matters anyway, these are the managers, their affect on the outcome of a baseball game is magnified by fans and media members, but I'm not totally convinced that they really make as big of an impact as we like to believe that they do. With that being said, here's the Off Base ballot for the Connie Mack Award in the National League.

Survivor Dips Into the Baseball's Retirement Home Again

Survivor comes back on September 24th, and for the second time in the TV show's history, a former Major League baseball player will be on scene trying to win some serious dough and be crowned The Survivor.

Two years ago it was Jeff Kent who stomped around shirtless for a few weeks before being voted off the island. I can only imagine whether or not Barry Bonds had some input on that vote. This year, the former baseball player playing the part of former baseball player on Survivor is everyone's favorite racist/conservative, John Rocker.

MLB Simply Couldn't Help Themselves, Could They

The Cubs have been steadily making the future right now by bringing up some of the best and brightest prospects (Except for Kris Bryant, who should totally be a regular in their everyday lineup. But I digress). A couple of weeks ago it was hard-swinging and hard-hitting Javier Baez. Yesterday, it was Jorge Soler.

Al Jean, Jose Canseco and Homer at the Bat

Perhaps you aren't a Simpsons fan and have no idea that every Simpsons ever started playing the marathon of all marathons last Thursday on FXX. If that's the case, this post isn't for you. Please go back to watching The Big Bang Theory on TBS. But if you're like me, you haven't been able to turn the channel in over 250-ish hours. Both work and my cable provider have called to make sure I was still alive. I am! And I still at least have cable for the moment.

Homer at the Bat, episode 8F13 with an original air date of February 20, 1992, aired during the marathon on Friday morning. This is important for a few reasons. Homer at the Bat was an amazing episode with player cameos galore. I also still had a concept of what day of the week it was. And finally, I hadn't fully armed myself with the protective coat of Cheeto dust that I'm sporting as I write this.

If you're unfamiliar with the episode, shame on you. You can catch up with my team study from 2010 right here. But the reason for rehashing this episode over 24(!) years later is that long time show runner, writer, producer and general Simpsons extraordinaire, Al Jean, is still not a fan of Jose Canseco. The commentary from Homer at the Bat is worth watching for a lot of nuggets but this was always my favorite, from Al Jean...

I usually say it's my favorite one, you know, people ask me, that I worked on, just because it was so exciting to meet all these guys and they were all really nice except for one whose name rhymed with Manseco

Of course, I pointed out that I knew this nerdy fact...

.@AlJean said all of the players were nice except for one whose name rhymed with Manseco

— MJ Lloyd (@MnkysThrwngDrts) August 22, 2014

And got this response...

@MnkysThrwngDrts First name rhymes with Blow-say.

— Al Jean (@AlJean) August 22, 2014

And now Blowsay Manseco will be the name of every fantasy baseball team I ever own again. Don't even think about stealing that either. Al Jean's blue haired lawyer claims I owe him $1.20 every time I type or say Blowsay Manseco. Dammit!

In case you are wondering why Al Jean might have been slightly annoyed grunt with Blowsay, I'll refer you to Deadspin's 20th anniversary post on the episode...

Aside from the logistics of recording nine separate guest roles, plot lines had to be rewritten on the fly. Jose Canseco's scene originally called for him and Mrs. Krabappel to engage in Bull Durham-inspired extramarital shenanigans. Canseco's wife rejected the scene, and the staff had to do a last-minute Saturday afternoon rewrite when Oakland came south on a mid-August road trip.

Instead of Lothario, Canseco got to play hero, rushing into a woman's burning house to rescue her baby, then cat, followed by a player piano, washer, dryer, couch and recliner combo, high chair, TV, rug, kitchen table and chairs, lamp, and grandfather clock. Requesting the new sequence turned out to be the wiser move. Canseco and his wife had nearly divorced earlier that year before reconciling, and a week before "Homer at the Bat" aired, Canseco was arrested by Miami police for chasing down and ramming his wife's BMW twice with his red Porsche at 4:30 a.m. After the chase ended, he allegedly got out of his car, came over to his wife's driver-side window, and spit on it.

It could have been the extra work the show runners, writers and cast had to put in to the episode that soured Al Jean on Canseco. Or it could have simply been from having to meet/work with him. I'll ask Jose his thoughts on the episode if I can raise enough money to pay him for an interview after his next PPV fight against a blindfolded bear.

Ice Bucket Challenge Crossed off the Bucket List

It was only a matter of time before I got nominated to do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and that time has now come.

Golden Sombrero: Jarrod Saltalamacchia

The Miami Marlins flew into Anaheim last night to kick off a three game set with the Los Angeles Angels. On Garrett Richards Wade LeBlanc night last night, they kicked the shit out of the Angels, 7-1, dropping three runs in the third inning and another four in the fourth. Six of the runs were charged to Wade LeBlanc, a pitcher who the Angels should look into replacing as of last week.