Robbery in the Making

No I'm not talking about robbery in the sense of how the Monday Night Football game ended last night where the Panthers got the win in a pretty well called final play. I'm also not talking about how the Christian Ponder robbed me of my joy at the Seahawks game this weekend (the game in which I attended). I'm talking about Yasiel Puig. Who? If you don't know, you should know right now. The man came in to this season and lit a fire under the hapless Dodger franchise that hadn't had a kick start like they did by any other player in franchise history and he got robbed not once, but twice. The first time he got robbed it was in July when he didn't receive the last vote to get into the All Star game. Not the end of the world, but seriously? The guy batted .400 his first month in the big leagues and brought his team from the dead at the beginning of the summer. It's all good, he didn't get into the mid-summer classic, I won't fault him for something that wasn't his fault. But losing rookie of the year is something a blog needs to be written about and I'm about to give you writers who think you know who your voting for a piece of my 2 pennies.

Clearly the history of baseball will mute the excellence of what Yasiel Puig brought to summer of 2013 as he literally carried his team to the greatest 50 game stretch baseball has ever seen. 41-9. You're telling me a guy who went 12-6 with a 2.16 E.R.A. beat out a guy who sprung his team from death to dusters of their division? I don't care that he only played 4 months during the regular season, He played in more meaningful games, the guy showed up and balled out harder than anybody I've seen play the game in a long time, and he made major league pitching look silly for almost 3 months, and might I add it was quite a historic 3 months. the Dodgers went 41-9 in their historic 50 game stretch this season, and the Marlins won 62 altogether throughout the entire season. From June 3rd to July 10th, Yasiel Puig batted over .400, he hit 19 HR's in 383 at bats, and he had 204 Total Bases with a .925 OPS. To give you an idea of how stupid his Total Bases stat is with 204 in 383 at bats, Paul Goldschmidt only had 332 and he had 602 at bats. To give you more perspective, Mike Trout last season had an OPS of .963, Total Bases of 315 (in 559 at bats), and only batted 7 points higher than Puig in more games. Let me remind you, Trout is heralded as the next Joe DiMaggio, and he had an ungodly 2012 where Puig had less time and was way more impressive LEADING HIS TEAM TO THE PLAYOFFS, something Trout has yet to do even though he has been "robbed" by many people of two consecutive MVP awards. How does a guy who wins 12 games on a terrible team where nobody has their mind set on winning any ways win the Rookie of the Year award when over half the time when teams go near the Marlins ballpark they are thinking of hitting the closest night club before and after the days game. Also, I never heard of this guy until the last game of the year when Jose Fernandez had a no-hitter where everybody was asking, who? Then he wins Rookie of the Year and wins it easily? No no no, there must be some confusion. Does Jose play on a winning organization? No, does he play in the spotlight? No, did he lead his team to the postseason? No... Why doesn't this add up in people's minds? Am I just that far off base where I should just get canned and people have already turned off my blog, or am I finally grasping some form of common knowledge in your brain to think that this Puig guy got scammed out of the award for not playing enough this year to earn the award that he did everything the encapsulate the definition of an electrifying rookie? Stats need to seriously stop ruining what the game provides in the front of us and we need to give the recognition to one of the greatest spark plugs the game ever saw in the year 2013, and for Puig not to receive the NL ROY it screams apathy for the sport of baseball and I weep for the future of this beautiful game.

I was at the football game this weekend and I was on tv. It was cool, but we still got our butt kicked. I promise to have more juicy topics next week, the NBA is really heating up and College Basketball is under way. The Holiday season is literally around the corner and festive cheer is in the air. Enjoy!