{"id":17329,"date":"2021-11-19T13:12:30","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T18:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17329"},"modified":"2021-11-19T13:12:30","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T18:12:30","slug":"2021-awards-wrap-up-and-bryce-mvp-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17329","title":{"rendered":"2021 Awards wrap-up and Bryce MVP #2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/harper-Bryce-phillies-phila-inquirer.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/harper-Bryce-phillies-phila-inquirer-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-16977\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/harper-Bryce-phillies-phila-inquirer-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/harper-Bryce-phillies-phila-inquirer-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/harper-Bryce-phillies-phila-inquirer-768x511.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/harper-Bryce-phillies-phila-inquirer.jpg 1400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Harper gets MVP #2.\n Photo via Phila Inquirer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Normally i take pride in being able to predict the 8 major post-season awards MLB gives out.  This year I kind of got a time crunch right when the prediction piece had to go out and gave it a quick guess instead of doing deep analysis.  how did I do on predictions nonetheless?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s how my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=17281\">predictions went versus actual<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\" id=\"block-c47d4b35-fe94-4581-bf66-44f8ede43f0e\"><li>AL MVP: predicted Ohtani, actual Ohtani unanimously.<\/li><li>AL Cy Young: predicted Robbie Ray, actual Ray with 29 of 30 1st place votes.<\/li><li>AL Rookie: predicted Arozarena, actual Arozarena with 22 of 30 1st place votes.<\/li><li>AL Manager; Predicted La Russa, actual Kevin Cash of Tampa.<\/li><li>NL MVP: predicted Bryce Harper, actual Harper with 17 of 30 first place votes.<\/li><li>NL Cy Young: predicted Corbin Burnes, actual Burnes in a very close vote.<\/li><li>NL rookie: predicted Jonathan India, actual India with 29\/30.<\/li><li>NL Manager: predicted Gabe Kaper SF Giants, actual Kapler.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>So, I got 7 of 8 right.  Not bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Current and former Nats are all over this year&#8217;s awards.  Harper wins MVP, Ray wins Cy Young.  Soto finished 2nd in MVP voting, Scherzer finished 3rd in Cy Young, Lucas Giolito got a 3rd place Cy Young vote, Trea Turner was 5th in NL MVP.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Speaking of Bryce Harper; he wins his 2nd MVP award.  Certainly it wasn&#8217;t nearly as dominant a season as he had in 2015, but it was still a highly impressive season.  He now has 40 career bWAR at the end of his age 28 season and two MVP awards.  The list of players who have won 2 or more MVPs (and who are not PED-associated) and are not in the Hall is pretty small: \u00a0<strong>Juan Gonzalez, Dale Murphy, Roger Maris<\/strong>.  One more MVP and Harper basically guarantees himself inclusion into the hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mention this because as he stands now he&#8217;s already the 45th ranked RF in baseball history by JAWS, and he&#8217;s signed for 10 more years in a hitter&#8217;s park.  The mean career bWAR for all inducted right fielders in the Hall is just 72 bWAR; Harper&#8217;s already well past the halfway point and is now basically entering his prime slugging years in his late 20s\/early 30s.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There seems to be a lot of antagonism towards Harper; constant droning that he&#8217;s overrated or that he didn&#8217;t deserve the contract he got.  Maybe you can be &#8220;over-rated&#8221; when you&#8217;ve got just one monster MVP quality season .. but two?   His career OPS+ is now 142, just a couple points below none other than <strong>Albert Pujols<\/strong>.  So, at some point the narrative has to change about Harper right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Normally i take pride in being able to predict the 8 major post-season awards MLB gives out. This year I kind of got a time crunch right when the prediction piece had to go out and gave it a quick guess instead of doing deep analysis. how did I do on predictions nonetheless? Here&#8217;s how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2667,1390,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-hall-of-fame","category-natsgeneral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17329"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17331,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17329\/revisions\/17331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}