Posted 2:27 PM by Sean
Last of the awards: Tejada beats out A-Rod. The Dallas Morning News's Evan Grant voted for Tejada, and explains why. Now, I'm not saying he doesn't have good reasons, but it's a wee bit disingenuous of him to quote the first two sentences of the ballot as evidence of the award's lack of guidelines, but leave out the portion that defines "actual value of a player to his team" as "strength of offense and defense."

I forgot who originally suggested it, but I once read an article arguing in favor of an Academy Awards-style presentation of the BBWAA hardware. As long as you're going to give these awards, you might as well go all the way and actually inject some drama into them. It'd also be a great opportunity to recap the season, honor Hall of Famers who've passed away, and just generally promote the sport. So look for it to happen around the same time Barry Bonds buys ice cream sundaes for everyone in the press corps.

Anyway, today is the first day free agents can negotiate and sign with teams. Jim Thome is expected to go to the Phillies or re-up with the Indians fairly quickly. Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux are the other big names out there, but they'll both probably take a while to make up their minds.