Our 2009 Roy Halladay Award ballot (Formerly the Cy Young Award)

If you ask us, they should just give Roy Halladay the Cy Young award every year, and then let him decide which pitcher in the league he deems most worthy of winning the award. Because you know he'd always pick exactly the right guy, with his trademark precision.

Alas, that's not the case, so indulge us as we go through our charade of a shadow ballot for the Baseball Bloggers Alliance:

1) Stupid Zack Greinke of the Stupid Kansas City Stupid Royals and his stupid excellent numbers (2.16 ERA, 242 Ks / 51 BBs, 1.07 WHIP, 9.4 WAR): There's no question that we want to give the top spot on our ballot to Roy Halladay, but Greinke's numbers across the board are just thatmuch too amazing to ignore. Those are Bob Gibson or Pedro Martinez numbers, so it would be a touch hard to defend our homerism if we were to ignore his great season. (Although having said that, we would note that Greinke's numbers probably wouldn't look nearly as shiny if he toed the rubber ten times against the Yankees and Red Sox.)

2) His Roy-al Docness, Harry LeRoy Halladay, Toronto Blue Jays (2.79 ERA, 208 Ks / 38 BBs, 1.13 WHIP, 7.3 WAR): Truth be told, there isn't a single pitcher in the Majors that we'd rather have than Doc. And if at some point in the next few years, if he should go to some other division where he's notfacing the Yanks and Sox and Rays all of the time, or if he should go to pitch in the Quadruple-A National League, he'll post numbers that will make people nauseous. We'll give the nod to Greinke because we're having a hard time quantifying the difference between their stregnth of schedules. (So essentially, we can't give Doc the award because we suck at math. We're sorry Roy...we've failed you again.)

3) Felix Hernandez, Seattle Mariners (2.49 ERA, 217 Ks / 71 BBs, 1.14 WHIP, 6.9 WAR): King Felix's ERA and win totals were better than Doc's, but most of the other relevant numbers are on par and we really could give a shit about wins. Plus, Doc plays in a man's game in the AL East. So we keep Hernandez in third for this year.

Honorable Mention: Justin Verlander, Detroit Tigers (3.45 ERA, 269 Ks / 63 BBs, 1.18 WHIP, 8.2 WAR) : We're pretty certain that lots of bloggers will point to Verlander's value metric as justification for him to be on the ballot. But he just got too many easy innings this season in a pitchers' park and a pitcher's division. The big numbers he posted versus the White Sox, Cleveland and Kansas City don't impress us much.

Interesting fun facts!
Although the three non-Halladays mentioned above had good seasons, they were no match for the mighty offense of the Blue Jays this season. Each of them got two starts against the Jays this season, and posted some of their worst ERA numbers against the Toronto Nine:

Greinke: 5.25
Felix: 6.59
Verlander: 10.97

Who knows? Maybe the Jays were trying to put a dent into their Cy Young chances for Doc.

Silver Sluggers to be awarded - Blue Jays need not apply

So once we get through today's pantomime of an AL Cy Young Award announcement, we can look forward to the fair and equitable distribution of Silver Slugger Awards.

We think it is pretty safe to assume that no Blue Jay is going to be so honoured this year. In fact, we'd be surprised if a Blue Jay got so much as a single vote amongst the managers and coaches who pick the winners.

The last time a Blue Jay won a Silver Slugger was in 2003, when Vernon Wells and Carlos Delgado ('member him?) both received one, in the same year that Roy Halladay won the Cy Young.

Wow. We had no idea at the time that 2003 was going to be viewed in retrospect as "the salad years".

Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to go slam our door on our hand to see if we can remember what it's like to feel something.