Guthrie gets no love outside of Law

I usually like all of Keith Law's work. That's why his most recent column got me all hot and bothered.

Here is his pick for AL Rookie of the Year: Jeremy Guthrie. His reasoning?

The Red Sox had three of the top five rookies in the league with Pedroia, Hideki Okajima and Daisuke Matsuzaka, and it's entirely possible that the actual balloting will find those three guys in the 1-2-3 spots. But despite fading badly down the stretch (possibly due to injury), Guthrie performed a bit better than any of the Red Sox's kids. He was the biggest success story of Leo Mazzone's tenure in Baltimore, and it will be interesting to see if he regresses with Mazzone gone.

If you're gonna claim that we should excuse the 28-year old Jeremy Guthrie's horrible performance over the latter half of the season (5.03 ERA Post All-Star, 6 starts in August with batters hitting .944 OPS off of him and a 6.23 ERA) because he may have been injured (he left his start due to injury on Sept 9, not in August I might add), then how would you feel about Pedroia hitting .302 in Sept/Oct with more XBH than K's, good defense, with a cracked hamate bone in his left hand?

It's true that Guthrie pitched lights out in the first half of the season outside his early stints in the bullpen. However, the award isn't for first half performance, it's for the entire season. They both played with injury and suffered for it; Pedroia had a .764 OPS in Sept/October but Guthrie only made 3 starts in September.

What's more egregious is that Keith Law picked fellow AL second baseman Placido Polanco as the 10th most deserving player for AL MVP.

In 67 less AB's, Pedroia had the more doubles, equal number of extra base hits, equal SB, and more walks. Their rates are OBP and SLG rates are almost identical with the disparity between the two players resulting from Polanco hit a lot more singles than Pedroia did. Singles.

The difference between Pedroia getting second in the AL Rookie of the Year and being a candidate for MVP is a bunch of base hits. And defense.

Polanco received a Gold Glove following an error-free season. Pedroia was not too bad though. Among ML second basemen, Pedroia was 6th in Zone Rating, 5th in Fielding Percentage, and 3rd least Errors.

Just for kicks:

2007 AL Rookie of the Year Voting
Player, Club	1st	2nd	3rd	Points
Dustin Pedroia, BOS	24	4		132
Delmon Young, TB	3	12	5	56
Brian Bannister, KC	1	8	7	36
Daisuke Matsuzaka, BOS		2	6	12
Reggie Willits, LAA		2	5	11
Hideki Okajima, BOS			3	3
Josh Fields, CWS			1	1
Joakim Soria, KC			1	1