The Heckler Awards

Derek Zumsteg

Best Manager
Larry Dierker, who managed a mid-payroll team to one of the NL's best records by playing baseball the way managers with brains should: he doesn't play small baseball and preaches the importance of not giving up walks while pitching and of taking walks while hitting. The result is a high-OBP team that drives other teams crazy.

Best Manager with unlimited resources
Joe Torre. Good job.

Worst Manager
Lou Piniella. Inept and idiotic. Should be the laughingstock of baseball, but instead he's held in high regard for a Pat Listach-esque Rookie of the Year season in New York decades ago and his temper. Unable to manage pitchers, unable to make out a lineup card, unable to develop any type of player, never a glimmer of hope for his bullpen management skills, unable to make sensible game decisions or, really to do anything but think of scapegoats for his pathetic failures: his pitching coaches, the talent in the bullpen which looked much better before coming over, the strange inability of the offense to score runs while he plays replacement-level hitters, the defense of the players he puts on the lineup card, and on, and on, and on. A coward and an asshead.

Best GM
Astros GM Gary Hunsicker. He doesn't make a whole lot of these blockbuster trades like LA and New York teams are prone to, but he's got a long history of little deals to keep his $40M team competing with the bottomless bags of money that New York, Atlanta and Co. hold. One of the characteristics of a great GM is their ability to give up things that will do the other side no good. For Randy Johnson, Hunsicker traded the M's Carlos Guillen and... young pitching! Look for them to be reclaimed later after suffering in the Mariner organization for a year.

Honorable mention to Reds GM Bowden, who seems to always get a little more from every deal than he gives up, though it means at one time he cornered the market on 1B/LF prospects.

Worst GM
Pat Gillick. What the hell he was thinking this past offseason is beyond me. He paid good, American dollars for the worst regular players available, adding them to a lineup already stocked with terrible players like Bordick, Ripken, and Brady Anderson. He seemed surprised when they started to lose, too, as if he'd really expected Joe Carter to break out Magic Bat and win every game they trailed in.

Worst Analyst
Peter Gammons. Why is this guy even respected? Reading his columns is like piecing together the fragmented thoughts of Hunter Thompson on the free agent market during drug season. He's lost all sense of causality and his writing has acquired a weird, ethereal ghostly sense. His dogged defense of name players and East Coast franchises makes him the lapdog of the establishment. It's time to put him down.

Honorable mention to the Denver Post's Bob Kravitz, a local sniper who likes to say really bad things about good players on other teams and got himself in hot water over a particularly unfair attack on Griffey this season over the All-Star HR Derby. Why not attack someone else like Juan Gonzalez, who didn't compete for the same reason? There's not nearly the national scene if you attack Juan (who is a bum). Kravitz should be ashamed of himself, not only for his conduct but for his abominable writing, the embodiment of all the things people make fun of in sports writing.

AL Rookie of the Year
Ah, Ben Grieve, why not. It's not like this was an exciting season o'er here in the AL. Arrojo probably deserved it more, but he's oooold.

NL Rookie of the Year
Kerry Wood is certainly the most talented of the bunch and without the Cubs working him so hard would have likely escaped the season intact. I really like Kerry Ligtenberg though. He didn't get any press, but that kid put up insanely good numbers with the Braves, who later (stupidly) decided they needed a closer (when Ken was doing just fine) and got one. Ligtenberg's a great reliever to watch, and I wish him all the best. I also liked the Todd Helton-Travis Lee competition, and while neither of them lit up the league like I thought they would, I think they're both going to be great first basemen.

AL MVP
Alex Rodriguez. Bernie Williams and Jim Thome both make excellent cases, but I'd like Thome to remain relatively unknown so I can pick him up for the Strikethree.com fantasy baseball league. Belle deserves consideration but know what? Fuck him.

NL MVP
Mark McGwire. I'm a little leery about this one, given that he really only hits homers, walks, or strikes out, but daaaaaamn. Barry Bonds, John Olerud, Bagwell, and Pizza came to mind. Briefly.

Worst Commissioner of Baseball
Bud Selig

Most annoying demand for a stadium
George Steinbrenner, whose team takes in more cash by a huge margin than any other.

Player most likely to have ginger snaps thrown at him in the KingDome
Brady Anderson

Player most likely to make stupid, self-inflating comments while trying to seem modest
Joe Carter. "Driving in runs is just something I've always had a talent for." Carter is one of the least productive offensive players in baseball the last few years, an RBI vulture in the middle of the order who refused to move. Thankfully, he's retiring. Unfortunately, he'll be going into broadcasting, where he's sure to spread the gospel of the RBI as defining stat.

Strikethree.com writer most likely to destroy TV while watching a baseball game due to inane commentary
That would be me.

 

about the author

Derek Zumsteg has been voted Commentator Most Likely to Cause You to Ask Where That Last Beer Went. Offer congrats at dmz@strikethree.com.