The NL Comeback Player of the Year is Javy Lopez. All the best choices for this award seem to be Braves (Rafael Furcal, Vinny Castilla), but J-Lo is far and away the best. He followed up his .233/11/52 in 2002 with an astonishing .330/42/106. I really don't think there's a good case for many other players, but it would be a creime to not at least mention Kevin Brown of the Dodgers.
The NL Breakthrough Player of the Year is another Brave, second baseman Marcus Giles. Still a relatively young player, Giles posted .321/20/68 in 2003 after two less than spectacular partial seasons in in 2001 and 2002.
The NL Unsung Hero is Reggie Sanders of the Pirates. This guy consistently puts up good numbers and yet nobody seems to give him a home for more than a year (he's the new Todd Zeile). But once again Sanders has had a very respectable season adding 15 stolen bases to .285/31/87. What's wrong with this guy?
Posted by at September 21, 2003 10:31 PM