It's mid-November, the time of year when the BBWAA hands out its end-of-season awards, and countless columns about the meaning of the word "valuable" are composed. It's also time for the second annual voting on the Moneyballs Award For Achievement In Sabermetric Porn. Last year's runaway winner was Cliff Lee, for his astounding 10.28 K/BB ratio. Lee followed that up with a 5.67 K/BB ratio and is not among the nominees this year. His reign as saber porn king has come to an end.
Here are this year's nominees. Cast your vote in the poll below. Whose performance was most saberly erotic?
- Bobby Abreu's MLB-best (for qualifying hitters) 19.6% O-swing%. The man has no power left but can still get on base.
- Jose Bautista.
- Chris Capuano's 13-strikeout, 0-walk, 2-hit shutout of the Braves on August 26th. Cap's performance earned an MLB season-best game score of 96. His FIP for the game was 0.14.
- R.A. Dickey's 2.33 BB/9. Tim Wakefield bested that mark only once in his long career, 2.31 BB/9 in 2010.
- Jacoby Ellsbury, for having the highest fWAR of any position player with positive numbers in all four fWAR components (batting, defense, baserunning, positional adjustment). Ellsbury also happened to have the highest fWAR in all of MLB.
- Roy Halladay's 6.29 K/BB ratio. Yawn, compared to 2010 Lee at least.
- Kenley Jansen's 16.10 K/9. He's Carlos Marmol with better control.
- Ian Kinsler's +11.5 EqBBR. This stat deemed him worth 11.5 runs more on the basepaths than an average baserunner. Kinsler had a saber-oh-face worthy 88% success rate stealing bases.
- Jonny Venters' 72.5% groundball rate. He allowed just 28 flyballs in 88 innings pitched.
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Matt Wieters' +15.2 runs catcher defense rating according to Beyond The Boxscore, far above Miguel Montero's second place mark of +7.8.
The winner receives a one year contract with the leading saber porn studio, Moneyballs Productions.