Jose Bautista: AL 3MVP

That's right folks; the best player in baseball this season was apparently only the third most valuable, as Jose Bautista lost the MVP race today to both winner, Justin Verlander, and runner-up, Jacoby Ellsbury.  I'd have been fine with an Ellsbury win, but this Verlander nonsense is just another reason for me to not give a shit about these awards.  Someone recently accused me of being butthurt at the Aaron Hill trade in the comment section of the post I made when Hill resigned with the D'Backs, and I definitely wasn't at all butthurt at that, but yeah, this MVP thing just kind of gives me the willies.  Fangraphs builds a case for Bautista as the MVP here, and they also have a similar piece for both Ellsbury and Verlander on their front page.

Anyway, apparently Michael Young got a first place vote in the MVP balloting, presumably from TR Sullivan (or whoever gets the Texas vote) [edit: Evan Grant, Dallas Morning News], which officially makes a mockery of this whole thing.  Some people will release their ballot information over the next few days, so hopefully we'll figure out who gave Young a 1st, Bautista a 9th, and Ellsbury a fucking 10th place vote so we can smash him in the head with an iron.  I say "him" since I assume that only one person within a small community of PROFESSIONAL FUCKING BASEBALL WRITERS CAN BE THAT GODDAMN OUT TO LUNCH, but maybe I'm giving the human race too much credit.  Afterall, these are the same people who saw that Justin Verlander threw a no-hitter against a shitty lineup and had 22 WINS OMG!, so they pretty much give him an MVP without paying attention to Jered Weaver or CC Sabathia, both of whom put up similar numbers while facing tougher schedules (Sabathia got two 6th place votes, Weaver got 0 votes, despite allowing 8 fewer runs in 15 fewer innings).

Whatever.

First, I'd like to throw condolences along to the family of Mariners' outfielder, Greg Halman, who was stabbed to death this morning in the Netherlands.  He was 24, and was reportedly murdered by his 22 year old brother.

As for Stuff, I've got this:

Former Jay Brian Jeroloman was DFA'ed again, this time by Pittsburgh, just a few days after being claimed, to make room for Clint Barmes.

The Jays are still rumored to be in on Huston Street, Andrew Bailey and Francisco Cordero.  And now that remaining free agent relievers won't cost a draft pick in compensation (more on that in a sec), you can expect them to look in to Heath Bell, Ryan Madson, Matt Capps, and so on.  Let the rumors fly!

The MLBPA and the owners have hammered out the new CBA, and should be ready to announce it tomorrow afternoon, according to MLBTR.  Among the changes, free agent Type-A relievers will no longer be worth compensation in the form of draft picks, which should allow the Jays to go ahead and still not sign expensive free agent closers.  Instead of random Elias rankings and arbitration, teams will be required to offer 1-year qualifying offers of at least $12.4MM to their potential free agents, based on some formula that they don't give us.  The $12.4MM will be a dynamic number, meaning that it will more than likely change each offseason.  I'm not sure if this is the same with Type-B compensation (if that still exists), but it seems really unlikely that teams like the Jays and Rays will still be able to game the system out of draft picks.

It appears the Colorado Rockies are trying to cut some costs, as they have traded Utility man Ty Wigginton to the Phillies for Cash or a player whose parents haven't named him yet.  This trade will allow the Rockies to save a couple million this year, and will allow at least one prospect to get some more time, while the Phillies get a replacement for Ryan Howard until he returns from his Achilles injury.  After that, I'm sure a platoon/backup/pinch hitter role will get Wiggy plenty of AB's.  This pretty much removes Philadelphia from the Michael Cuddyer sweepstakes.

Sean at Nowhere Plans likens Pujols to Lebron, sort of, and wonders what the outcome will be in STL if Albert leaves.