Pioneer Skies 2015 1st Half MVP

MY FIRST HALF MVP IS NONE OTHER THAN THE GUY WHO, WITH ONLY 11 PITCHES, WON homefield advantage in THE WORLD SERIES:



Come on, how can you not love this dude?

Pioneer Skies 1st half MVP is Batman

You heard me!  Batman:



Seriously, that's my 1st half MVP, narrowly edging out Edwin Encarnación.  He takes the award, as he leads all of baseball with the most of these:

Pioneer Skies 1st Half MVP

Without much further ado, my 1st half MVP is...

Take it from me...

Take it from me, someone who owns a Miguel Cabrera shirt, the AL MVP should be...



THAT GUY!  Even if Miguel Cabrera wins the triple crown. 

I could try to explain why, but Dave Cameron of FanGraphs already has in a way more eloquent than I ever could manage.  Don't believe in WAR?  Read the article anyway.  Trout has been more valuable than Cabrera, even if you don't look at the enormous disparity in WAR.

My shirt is still awesome, but Mike Trout should be the MVP of the American League.

Pioneer Skies' 1st half MVP

With an honorable mention to Joey Votto, my first half MVP is this guy:


Sure, he's racked up 297 points, but what about his defense?

Colorado Tumbleweed First Half MVP

While there are several honorable mentions - Stephen Strasburg and the Derek Jeter-Gio Gonzalez roster slot come to mind, the Colorado Tumbleweed would like to celebrate Melky Cabrera as the 1st half MVP. 

Monday Minutiæ

When dealing with a serious story like the Ryan Braun drug test, it's important to keep things in perspective and not blow things out of proportion.

 

Since the news broke that Braun won his appeal and won't be suspended for 50 games, the main contention against Braun has been that he still tested positive but escaped consequences due to a technicality.  Proponents of this contention say that the forty-four hour delay in submission doesn't alter the integrity of the testing process, and therefore Braun is dirty--which among other things means his 2011 NL MVP award is dirty. 

That knee-jerk reaction has one enormous assumption--that the forty-four hour delay had no effect whatsoever on the results of the tests.  I'm not sure that average baseball fans know enough about chemistry/toxicology to safely rely on such a critical assumption.  Personally, I do know that urine is a waste product of the body, and therefore much different than blood when it comes to toxicology tests.  One thing I don't know is the rate at which epitestosterone breaks down in a urine sample.  That seems to be an important factor in the science of steroid testing, no?

Since we are talking about scientific processes here, let's keep in mind that reproducibility is one of the main principles of the scientific method.  If the extended delay really did alter the result of Braun's test, it would be scientifically reproducible.  Right?