The original post was written on March 22, 2018 and it
outlined my prediction for the Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman Award winners.
The Mariano Rivera Award goes to the best relief pitcher in the American League
while the Trevor Hoffman Award goes to the best relief pitcher in the National
League respectively. My predictions had Ken Giles of the Astros winning in the
American League (and promptly punching himself in the face in celebration for
it) while the National League winning was Wade Davis of the Colorado Rockies.
What a tough day at the plate for me as I put up an 0-3 in my predictions.
Tomorrow is another day for baseball though, that’s the beautiful thing about
playing a game basically every day.
Prediction Season is here at The Greedy Pinstripes and with
the Division winners and Wild Card winners announced, the postseason done, and
the New York Yankees named the World Series Champions for the 2018 season we
will switch directly into awards season. Contrary to some beliefs the relief
pitchers in Major League Baseball have their own award at the end of the
season, the Mariano Rivera Award for the best relief pitcher in the American
League and the Trevor Hoffman Award for the best reliever in the National
League. Now I am not trying to incite a riot here or really even spark up a
debate, although feel free to debate in the comments section or on Twitter by
sending @GreedyStripes a tweet, but for that reason (both these awards and the
American League and National League Cy Young Awards that we will cover at a
later time) I feel like these pitchers should be disqualified from the running
for AL and NL MVP awards. I just do, sorry. Without kicking the hornets’ nest
any more let’s take a look at my predictions for the Mariano Rivera and Trevor
Hoffman Award winners for the 2018 season.
The New York Yankees and their closer Aroldis Chapman are at
a bit of a disadvantage when it comes down to awards like the Mariano Rivera
Award for the best reliever in the league. The Yankees have the best problem a
manager can have, too many qualities relievers, too many relievers with closing
experience, and too many weapons at one manager’s disposal to be able to
single-handedly point out and showcase just one of them. For that reason, I
cannot pick a Yankee to win the award, but instead I will choose a member of
the team that knocked out the Yankees in the 2017 ALCS, the Houston Astros
closer Ken Giles. Giles should have the most opportunities of any closer in the
American League to nail down a save, and with the Astros offense behind him the
right-hander should have a bit of wiggle room if he were to have an off night.
These awards generally go to a pitcher on a winning team, for obvious reasons,
so why not the closer on the team that I predicted to be tied for the most wins
in the American League in 2018? Just makes sense to me.
The Colorado Rockies built what the organization hopes to be
a “Super Bullpen” during the offseason before the 2018 season and those efforts
will yield great results for a team starved of quality pitching. The team has a
staff of young starters with tons of upside, but it will be the bullpen’s
ability to turn every game into a six-or-seven inning contest that will
separate the team from the pack and keep the club in a lot of games that they
normally wouldn’t have won. At the helm of this bullpen will be the Rockies
closer, former Cubs fireballer Wade Davis. Davis should enjoy the lack of
pressure pitching for the Rockies as opposed to pitching with the Cubs in
recent seasons which should show not only on the field, but in his stat line as
well. The fact that Colorado has also added big arms to help him like Bryan
Shaw will only help Davis succeed giving him less innings to “mop up” and less
jams to get out of, which could subsequently wear a pitcher down and inflate
his stat line just a bit.
