Man Bites Dog

In a shocking turn of events, Alex Rodriguez was considered for a baseball award, someone got screwed in the award voting, and it wasn't him. The first-ever Ted Williams Award for best major-leaguer hitter of the year was won by A-Rod-the Splendid Splinter must be rolling over in his cryogenic chamber.

Rodriguez was the best-hitting shortstop. He should have won the AL MVP. But in no way was he the best hitter in the bigs last year.

Here are the top 10 qualifiers according to OPS:

NAME        BA  OBP  SLG  OPS OPS+  HR%   RC/27Outs EqA Runs Above Pos
Bonds     .370 .582 .799 1.381 275 11.41%  19.06   .457    126.2
Thome     .304 .445 .677 1.122 191 10.83%  11.20   .369     64.6
Ramirez   .349 .450 .647 1.097 190  7.57%  11.23   .370     56.6
Giles     .298 .450 .622 1.072 173  7.65%  10.07   .351     53.9
Giambi    .314 .435 .598 1.034 174  7.32%   9.37   .351     55.8
Walker    .338 .421 .602 1.023 146  5.45%   9.65   .318     23.0
Rodriguez .300 .392 .623 1.015 152  9.13%   8.76   .334     68.2
Guerrero  .336 .417 .593 1.010 162  6.35%   9.00   .331     44.1
Helton    .329 .429 .577 1.006 143  5.42%   9.44   .320     25.8
Sosa      .288 .399 .594  .993 160  8.81%   8.54   .332     41.2

Note that A-Rod was 7th in OPS, 8th in Baseball-Reference.com's Adjusted OPS (OPS+), 3rd in Home Runs per At-Bat, 9th in Runs Created per 27 Outs, 6th in Baseball Prospectus's Equivalency Average, but 2nd in BP's Runs Above Position. The only major category he did lead the majors in was home runs, but he did it in 221 more at-bats than Bonds.

Who was first in every one of those categories? Barry Bonds, of course. Bonds had another historic year at the plate. A-Rod's was historic for shortstops, but the award wasn't just for shortstops, was it? A-Rod may have been the fourth best hitter in the American League alone.

Clearly there is no way that anyone other than Bonds should have been seriously considered for this award last year. But hey, at least they didn't give it to Juan Gonzalez.