The Sporting News issued their awards for the season yesterday.
It is believed by some that the awards are a precursor to the official awards. The Sporting News player awards, in the case of the NL, are voted on by 296 players in the league. The manager award is voted on by the managers. They are the peer awards as opposed to ones bestowed by the sports writers for the official MLB awards.
The 2006 Marlins came home with two of the awards and one second place.
Congratulations Dan!
I still think that Ramirez and Sanchez should have finished ahead of Zimmerman. Yes, I'm biased - I know that, but so what.
The ballots for the TSN awards are turned in during the middle of September, so their foreshadowing of the MLB awards may be somewhat dubious.
The other person to be honored was the manager:
Congratulations Joe!
The Sporting News went on to list the NL All-Stars for the season and this is where the second place finish in the player balloting happened.
Cabrera had a better batting average than Wright. The same number of home runs and two fewer RBI. Granted, Wright was a slicker fielder than Cabrera for most of the season. So maybe that had something to do with him not winning the peer award.
Who knows.
But Cabrera was definitely in the hunt.
Once again, congratulations to the winners and the near winner.