About half the postseason awards have been handed out, with one controversial vote, and another today that was, uh, kinda odd.

Looking at the results for Manager of the Year, it's hard to imagine that the same group of writers voted on the two awards. The NL ballot was, I think, sensible; McKeon won, but Baker, Cox and Alou all got a lot of support, and Frank Robinson also snuck in on a couple of ballots.

But the American League results... they was loopy. The right guy won, in Tony Pena, and maybe that's all that matters. But whoever the writer was who put Alan Trammell on his ballot (manager of arguably the worst team in baseball history) needs to get a life.

Worse, Lou Pinella appeared on five ballots, including four second-place finishes. In case you didn't notice, the Devil Rays lost 99 games; they were as bad as they have ever been. There may be more optimism for the future with Lou in charge, but surely the team has to improve on the field before he merits award consideration.

Ron Gardenhire finished second in the vote, and appeared first on four ballots. Gardenhire made the most obvious blunder of any manager in the AL when he waited until July to move Johan Santana into the starting rotation. Yes, his team made the playoffs, but only because they were in a horrible division; the Mariners and Blue Jays were both better than the Twins.

The guy who got screwed was Joe Torre, who finished behind Pena and Gardenhire and also Ken Macha and Grady Little (obviously, the voting was done before the playoffs). Yes, Torre had a huge payroll to work with, but his team clearly had less talent and more problems than in previous years.

Next to 1998, I think it was Torre's best job as a manager — he might have deserved the award. And he repeatedly proved himself to be one of the classiest people in the game, in stark contrast to his idiot owner.

The earlier controversy was the AL Rookie of the Year ballot. My choice, Angel Berroa, won the award, and that is good. Unfortunately, he won for the wrong reasons. Not because he deserved the award (and he did), but because two vigilante writers decided to make up their own rules and leave Hideki Matsui off of their ballot.

On this website, I have made my own rule when choosing an MVP: I don't consider pitchers. It's my website, my rules. But if I were a member of the BBWAA, I would vote for a pitcher if I thought he deserved it. I may not like it, but those are the BBWAA rules. These two idiot writers have tarnished the reputation of the award by putting their own agenda first.

The BBWAA Awards have history on their side, and are baseball's most important. But there are a lot of alternatives available on the internet, where groups of knowledgeable fans get together, vote, and produce interesting results. If they want their awards to remain relevant, I think it's time for the BBWAA to take voting seriously, and start weeding out the incompetent voters.