On Monday, the finalists for all of the end of season awards for 2020 were announced. Zero St. Louis Cardinals players were announced as finalists.
After an up and down 2020 season, the St. Louis Cardinals will not have any players even in the running for any of the end of season awards.
On Monday, finalists for the MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and Manager of the year were announced. There were not too many surprises, including the omission of Cardinals players.
In 2019, Mike Shildt won the NL Manager of the Year after his first full season in the role. At the time of that win, it seemed Mike Shildt had the Cardinals on the right path in terms of a much-improved defense and fundamentals. Can we still say that now?
This year, it would’ve been conceivable to see Mike Shildt in the running again after he dealt with the extremely difficult task of guiding the Cardinals through the most widespread COVID-19 outbreak in baseball. Even if the team was relatively mediocre, no other team had to overcome such adversity. With 53 games in the final 44 days of the season, the Cardinals still made the playoffs.
The three nominees for the award were Jayce Tingler of the Padres, David Ross of the Cubs, and Don Mattingly of the Marlins, the other team that had a widespread COVID-19 outbreak.
The only other award that a Cardinal could have been included in was Kwang Hyun Kim as a Rookie of the Year finalist. Kim debuted in the MLB at 32 after signing a two-year, $8M deal before the season. Kim had just a 1.62 ERA in 39.0 innings pitched on the year.
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Kim succeeded through getting soft contact and throwing strikes, evident in his 5.5 strikeouts per nine and 2.8 walks per nine. He also ranked in the 84th percentile in both hard hit percentage and barrel percentage. Sadly though, a short stint on the Injured List in the middle of the season kept him from hitting a high enough innings count on the year to really be considered for the award.
The three nominees for Rookie of the Year were the Phillies’ Alec Bohm, the Padres’ Jake Cronenworth, and the St. Louis native Devin Williams on the Brewers. All three are deserving candidates with Kim surely landing just outside of the top three.
There likely won’t be a Cardinal who sniffs anywhere near the top of Cy Young or MVP voting in 2020, something that really highlights the continued problem for the Cardinals. They have a lot of good players, but their lone superstar (Paul Goldschmidt), is not well enough protected in the lineup to shine brightly.
The omission of every Cardinal from the end of season awards nominees should not be a surprise, and that is just the problem. It was a tough year in 2020, but change is needed. Is it coming?