Here are some alternative MLB awards to highlight underappreciated athletes

Last night, the American League and National League MVP Awards were handed out (Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt, respectively), ending MLB’s week-long parade following the World Series celebrating the 2022 season. While the MVP and Cy Young Awards are great, they don’t pay any homage to the hard workers of MLB, the athletes who make the baseball cogs turn year in and year out. For every Aaron Judge, there’s a player just trudging their way through the MLB season, barely staying in the Big Leagues by the hair on their chinny-chin-chins. I’m talking about the players who aren’t as gifted as the All-Stars of the MLB world, and thus, must find another way to prove their value to their squads. Hopefully, these Deadspin awards can shine a light on some of those unsung heroes.

SIDE NOTE: Some of these ideas are products of Foolish Bailey’s recent video detailing his thoughts on the MLB awards, but I figured I would go in a little deeper and add a few of my own.

Similar to Bailey’s Innings Muncher Award, this award is meant to shine a light on the player that goes out on the bump for their team when all is lost. Perhaps their starter got hammered and the game is already lost heading into the fourth inning. At that point, the losing team knows they need to play another six innings and they don’t want to waste any of their best relievers on this abysmal game. That’s when they throw these guys out there, the subpar relievers with arms made of tungsten who can waste a good four or five innings and keep the rest of the bullpen fresh.

In Bailey’s video, he gave his award to the pitcher with the most innings pitched in 2022 while maintaining an ERA-plus of less than 100 (meaning he’s a worse-than-average pitcher). I’d like to add a prerequisite. The pitcher in question needs to have twice as many or more relief appearances than games started. In a league where every team runs a five-man rotation, it’s going to be nearly impossible for all five pitchers to be above average, and more often than not, that fifth pitcher will still have a decent amount of innings pitched, but that’s only because in order for the team to operate at its highest level, that fifth pitcher needs to go out there every fifth day and put together their best performance possible. Relievers don’t have to do that. They only come out for very specific purposes, and thus, I believe they are much more suited to this type of award.

With that in mind, this award goes to 29-year-old Trevor Richards of the Toronto Blue Jays. Richards was not a good pitcher in 2022. Through 62 games and 64 innings pitched, Richards posted a 5.34 ERA, 4.07 FIP, and 4.9 BB/9 to go along with his 73 ERA-plus. Still, of all players to appear in at least 67 percent of their games as a reliever while maintaining an ERA-plus under 100, only six pitched more innings than Richards. However, Richards had the lowest ERA-plus by eight points and the highest ERA by 0.49. For Toronto, he was never someone who would win them a game, just someone who could get them through their most dreadful games of the season, and even that is a necessary job.

The term five-tool player gets tossed around a lot in baseball. Anybody with that moniker will likely have a good shot at winning an MVP Award at some point in their career. We’re not looking at those players. We’re looking for a two-tool player at most, someone who can hit for average and power, but can’t do anything else. Furthermore, I will not be taking designated hitters into account for this. Sure, they’re the most obvious answers, but it’s literally their job to be good at hitting and nothing else. I’m not going to reward someone simply for doing their job. No sir-ee. I’m a capitalist.

In order to qualify for this award, the player in question must have accrued negative value as a baserunner, fielder, and have below-average arm strength, while maintaining an OPS-plus of 100 or better. They must also have played at least two-thirds of their games in the field. Anything less will result in immediate disqualification.

This year’s winner is Juan Soto!

In 2022, Soto earned -1 runs as a baserunner, -2 runs as a fielder, and his average throw from right field clocked in at an astonishingly low 85.8 miles per hour. He did all this while recording a 149 OPS-plus, the third-highest of anyone who recorded negative runs as a baserunner and fielder. The two that ranked ahead of Soto were Mike Trout and Freddie Freeman. However, Trout was well above league average in terms of arm strength, averaging 90.2 miles per hour on his throws from center field, ranking 57th in all of baseball. The average throw speed from a center fielder in 2022 was 90.0 miles per hour, according to BaseballSavant. While Freeman had a lower average MPH on his throws (80.8), he was also doing so from first base. The average MPH from first basemen in 2022 was 78.2, meaning Freeman actually had the sixth-strongest arm of all first basemen this year. The same can’t be said for Soto.

Right field is typically where you play your outfielder with the strongest arm, due to the throw to third base. The metrics back this up. The average throw from left field was 87.3 mph, center: 90.0 mph, and right: 90.5 mph. Of all right fielders with at least 100 throws in 2022, Soto ranked 40th of 44 in arm strength, meaning he wasn’t a good baserunner, fielder (contrary to what his Gold Glove finalist distinction would tell you), and had a well-below-average arm. But hey, the man is a monster at the plate, and that’s all the Padres really need out of him.

Other people who were in consideration for this award were Tampa Bay’s Yandy Díaz (143 OPS-plus, -1 baserunning runs, -13 fielding runs, ranked 50th of 53 in third baseman arm strength), San Francisco’s Joc Pederson (144 OPS-plus, -2 baserunning runs, -15 fielding runs, ranked 30th of 40 in left fielder arm strength), and Texas’ Nathaniel Lowe (141 OPS-plus, -4 baserunning runs, -9 fielding runs, but ranked eighth of 55 in first baseman arm strength).

Everyone remembers their little league coach telling them to “run it out.” Even if you hit a soft dribbler to first base, your coach would be in your ear telling you to hustle down the first-base line in case something happened. In MLB, most players don’t run hard when they know they’re going to be thrown out, especially when that player isn’t the fastest guy in the world.

Bailey talked about this in his video. The winner was determined by the player with the fastest average home-to-first time, while having zero bolts of greater than 30 feet per second. I like that, but I want to go even further. Thirty feet per second is very fast. In fact, there were only 11 players in all of MLB who averaged a sprint speed faster than 30 feet per second. So instead, I’m going to be looking for the player with the fastest home-to-first time while staying at or below league average in that category, with at least one bolt of 30 feet per second or faster. Hopefully, this will detail someone who isn’t fast, but was capable of going into second gear when his team really needed him to get on base, and that’s what hustle is all about.

In 2022, the average sprint speed was 27 feet per second. There were only four players to average 27 or fewer feet per second with at least one bolt on the season: Philadelphia’s Odúbel Herrera, Baltimore’s Rougned Odor, Arizona’s Ketel Marte, and the Chicago White Sox’s Danny Mendick. Despite Mendick having the slowest home-to-first time of anyone on this list, I really wanted to give him this award, because everyone else on this list averaged either 27 or 26.9 feet per second from home to first this year. Mendick averaged 26. Despite having well-below-average speed, especially for a shortstop, he was able to bust out one bolt of 30 feet per second or better and that’s evidence of a very hard worker. Still, that’s not what the qualifications were. Of those four players I mentioned earlier, the fastest home-to-first time belonged to Odúbel Herrera, averaging 4.28 seconds to reach first base, the fastest of anyone with an average sprint speed of 27 feet per second or slower. He may not be the best hitter, and his value may have gone down every year since 2015, but he hustles on the basepaths, and that’s worth noting.

This award goes out to the pitchers out there with some of the worst pitches known to man and an ERA-plus over 100. I’m looking for a pitch with low movement, low whiff rate, and low value, but still decent usage (at least 10 percent). The pitcher in question must also have at least 50 innings pitched on the season. It’s pretty self-explanatory, so here’s the winner.

Los Angeles Dodgers starter Walker Buehler pitched only 65 innings in 2022 to the tune of a 4.02 ERA and 105 ERA-plus. When healthy, Buehler is regarded as one of the best pitchers in the National League. Much of his 2022 was derailed by injury, but he seemed poised to repeat his incredible 2021 campaign. He’s got a great arsenal of pitches, but in 2022, Buehler’s four-seam fastball was one of the worst in all of baseball.

According to FanGraphs, Buehler’s four-seamer earned -12.4 runs above average in just 65 innings pitched. Of all pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched, that ranks Buehler 18th-to-last, behind the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Chris Archer, and Mike Minor, each of whom had ERA-pluses of 44, 85, and 74 respectively. Yikes! Not the company you want to be in.

Still, Buehler has become much less reliant on his four-seam fastball as his career has progressed. In 2019, Buehler was throwing this pitch over 60 percent of the time. In 2022, albeit in a much more limited capacity, Buehler only threw his four-seamer 39.2 percent of the time, opting for his much more effective cutter instead. Still, Buehler’s four-seamer was his most-thrown pitch in 2022. Maybe he should consider changing that in the future.

While Buehler’s fastball had above-average vertical movement — 1.2 inches above average according to BaseballSavant — its horizontal movement was well below average at -2.1 inches. Of all pitchers with at least 250 fastballs thrown in 2022, Buehler had the 82nd-lowest horizontal movement. As I said earlier, Buehler has become more reliant on his cutter, which is known for having immense horizontal movement, as the years have progressed. Based on his four-seam fastball numbers, I can totally understand the shift.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. WAR is a metric that, according to some people, gives too much credit to the defensive aspect of the game. We’re going to use that to our advantage here. For this award, we’re trying to find a player with a negative offensive WAR but a positive overall WAR across at least 200 plate appearances. Whichever player has the largest differential between their oWAR and WAR is the winner.

The 2022 recipient belongs to Cincinnati’s Aristides Aquino!

Of all players with a negative oWAR and positive WAR, only two had a WAR over 1.0: Aquino and Oakland’s Nick Allen. However, Allen had a WAR of exactly 1.0, whereas Aquino had a WAR of 1.4! That blows everyone else out of the water. And to top it all off, Aquino had the lowest oWAR of them all at -0.8.

Aquino posted an abysmal triple-slash of .197/.246/.363, good for a 63 OPS-plus, but according to Baseball-Reference, he was worth 20 runs in the field. The fact that Aquino didn’t earn Gold Glove finalist recognition and Juan Soto did is a travesty I won’t get over any time soon. They played the same position, but one of them was one of the best fielders in the league and the other is more worthy of a tinfoil glove than anything else. Unfortunately, my cries landed on deaf ears. Maybe it’s because Aquino only played in 80 games. Still, he was a phenomenal fielder, far better than Soto. Hopefully, Aquino will get the defensive glory he deserves next year.