Before we turn our attention to 2011 Spring Training…….

The Winners are:

Batter – Robinson Cano

Pitcher – C.C. Sabathia

Reliever – Mariano Rivera

Bench – Marcus Thames

The tally of points for best batter and pitcher (excluding the winners) went something like this:

Pitchers:

Kerry Wood 3

Andy Pettitte 3

Sergio Mitre 2

Damaso Marte 1

Phil Hughes 1

Jonathan Albaladejo 1

Boone Logan 1

Alfredo Aceves 1

Joba Chamberlain 1

Ivan Nova 1

Romulo Sanchez 1

David Robertson 0

Dustin Moseley 0

Javier Vazquez -2

A.J. Burnett -2

Royce Ring -2

Chan Ho Park -3

Chad Gaudin -5

Batters:

Nick Swisher 2

Mark Teixeira 1

Eduardo Nunez 1

Ramiro Pena 0

Lance Berkman 0

Francisco Cervelli 0

Colin Curtis 0

Juan Miranda -1

Brett Gardner -1

Chad Huffman -1

Nick Johnson -1

Alex Rodriguez -2

Derek Jeter -2

Curtis Granderson -2

Kevin Russo -2

Randy Winn -2

Jorge Posada -3

Austin Kearns -3

Comments

The points score is obviously skewed by those players who spent such a little time on the roster. Examples of this are Jonathan Albaladejo amongst the pitchers and  Nunez, Huffman, Johnson, Russo and Winn amongst the batters. If you mentally sort these into a separate list entitled minors / bench and bear in mind that the two lists of scores are on scales that bear no resemblance to each other, it actually does tell us something about the season gone by. It reminds us, particularly, how bad and below par a season Posada, Jeter, Vazquez and Burnett had and how much of a misfit Kearns was in his short stay in pinstripes.