2030 WBH Awards

voted

Voted

Voted! Many thanks to Jeff the Great for taking on this project.

I’m bummed that MR Alatorre (Reliever), MR Jen (Reliever) and 2B Bastidos (Rookie) weren’t nominated, but that’s how it goes.

@Maracaibo (KOR) wrote:

Bob, was using 100 ABs as my cutoff for rookie eligibility. I saw that Bastidos had 105 ABs in 2029 and decided that was enough to make him not officially a rookie in 2030. I can add him to the voting if the consensus is he should be eligible. There were some other bats in the same predicament, so it might be a big can of worms.

Nope, not a problem. That’s a lot better than the game’s cutoff.

The Case for Kim

Hyun-oo Kim pitched 74 innings in 65 appearances over the course of the 2030 season. Kim, used primarily as the Incheon setup man, pitched more innings than any other nominated reliever. In those 74 innings, Kim struck out 61 batters, while walking 8, giving him a K/BB ratio of 7.63, best of all nominated relievers. In those 74 innings, Kim allowed 10 runs, all of them earned, giving him the lowest ERA (1.22) of the nominated pitchers. Lastly, Kim led his team, and all nominated relievers, in wins with 10.

Voted. Wonder if my guy Fluellen would have been nominated in the SP category if we had given him run support in one of those last starts so he could have gone 15-1 instead of 14-1.

Pitcher of the year should be really close. Three-way coin flip between Yi, Martinez and Grinaldo IMHO.

In the end it was one more quality start, a few more innings, a better VORP, and some black and white pinstripes that put Yi over the top for me.

Carasco is a god.

Has anyone ever cracked 10.0 WAR? The all-time leader board tool doesn’t seem to work anymore…

Voted…thanks for taking the time to set this up.

Nice job, Jeff. Thanks.

Voted! Thanks for organizing this!

This brings up an interesting discussion.

Now it’s not because I don’t like Gerry, he’s one of my favorite GMs and a friend. But when you go so many seasons losing on purpose and stock piling players and picks and have a season like he had this year (obviously a great year), should it REALLY be considered as one of the most improved GMs?

Also goes with my statement that not every USA champ is the best GM (I know it doesn’t always happen as much as the biggest + in games usually gets the most improved).

voted, thanks for taking the time to set this up!

@Moca (JPN) wrote:

Now it’s not because I don’t like Gerry, he’s one of my favorite GMs and a friend. But when you go so many seasons losing on purpose and stock piling players and picks and have a season like he had this year (obviously a great year), should it REALLY be considered as one of the most improved GMs?

Jeff and I discussed this before the awards were announced. The verdict was that he would be eligible because the year that he threw games was 2028 and didn’t directly affect his win increase.

Now, whether you choose to vote for him is up to you. I chose not to vote for him based because I thought the exact same thing as Dan.

I’m not a big fan of the ‘most improved’ category in general. I think we have a lot of good GMs whose teams have up and down years for various reasons. Most improved team? That might be a better category, but even then that’s something easy to just ‘manufacture’ with some creative roster management.

Tank-Stock-Rise may actually be the best strategy for getting into the USA, and it’s something we should probably neither reward nor punish. We’ve seen, and continue to see a number of teams do this either by design or otherwise. I don’t do it myself, but not because I think it’s cheating, rather because I hate losing, period (which might come as a surprise since I do it so well). Should we try to force GMs to put forth a good faith effort to field competitive teams every season? MLB certainly doesn’t do it, and these are real teams abusing real fans (I’m looking at you, Jeffrey Loria).

This will probably be the last year I cast a vote in that category.

There’s a difference between rebuilding and tanking. Ben (Taegu) is one example of a GM who’s rebuilding but still putting worth an effort. Gerry tanked. Big difference.

I think this could be one of the first times I’ve had players on any individual nomination. Even though I’ve had a few 80 wins seasons, no one ever seems to make it in these. Guess it must just be great managing 😉

@Incheon (CAN) wrote:

I’m not a big fan of the ‘most improved’ category in general.

Me neither, because it’s nearly impossible to quantify so when ballot time comes around it winds up being “who won more games than last season?”

I was nominated in 2026 because my team won 46 games in the USA in 2025, I got booted out, and because my finances were a mess I pretty much ran the same group of guys out there and won 65 games in Cuba the next season. I guess my not being able to do anything was an improvement?

Maybe teams that were relegated the year before should not be eligible for this award, or their win difference total should be handicapped like we do for the draft.

Ideally we would have some sicko who pays attention to the day-to-day operations of all 56 teams and he could let us know who stopped doing stupid things and started doing smart things. Cap_PDT_01_17

I don’t think it’s that hard. You can get a feel from year to year that is quantified by the numbers but guys who actually follow the boards and the leagues in general or the trend of teams can know who is the most improved.

Same thing about best GM. You can tell certain guys worked their tail off making moves and trades and going above and beyond making their team truly good. Win total isn’t the best thing to use in either category.

I think when we make out the ballots, at the very least teams that were relegated should have an asterisk so that we know who they are straight away. Then we can mentally note to ourselves what difference that makes.

If a relegated team has roughly a +10 win advantage, whoever is making out the ballot should probably take that into consideration. In the past, we have not taken that into consideration, and rather often relegated GMs win this award. I once joked it should be renamed the “Best Relegated Team”, because we had a string of them winning.

In this case, maybe Thunder Bay could have been on the ballot instead of Tocumen or Cancun, for example, since they both had the relegation advantage. This is something we could consider moving forward.

@Incheon (CAN) wrote:

I’m

I love that new Incheon logo! That is very nice!

@Pacora (JPN) wrote:

I love that new Incheon logo! That is very nice!

Thanks. Been wanting to do something with it. Don’t know why a variation of the worm in the apple image didn’t occur to me until yesterday.

voted, finally!

Congrats to Warren on being GM of the Year! It’s been a long time since there was a third tier winner. Based on some quick research, it looks like MMD was the last third tier winner of this award in 2019.

Last offseason, I was so unhappy to lose my ace SP (Akihisa Morishita), and the Closer of the Year (Guillermo Carrazco), when both of them decided to exercise player options.

Lo and behold, without them, my pitching staff set an all-time record in ERA, and HK now boasts back-to-back Closers of the Year. Yturralde had been pegged as the setup man for years to come, but man did he ever deliver for the Golden Dragons in 2030. Not bad for a converted outfielder.

Congrats to all winners…and a special shout-out to Warren from me, too. Must have a been a frustrating past few seasons.

I’m putting this in a separate post so it stands alone…and editing the OP to reflect it.

The commissioner can award a “WBH Dedication” award to someone who helps the league out, keeps things running smoothly. The last few seasons I haven’t given it to anyone, mostly because we had our system set, and the same guys were contributing who have been recognized before. Of course I appreciate everyone’s help, old and new, but didn’t feel a need to keep awarding the same award again and again.

But this year I’d like to recognize Andrew Leinung of the Baracoa Bahia. When we lost our last reports guy, Andrew stepped right up and offered to help. And do you notice something? Since he offered to take it over, it has hardly been mentioned again. People don’t even think about it…because it’s just always done.

That is a super huge help to us keeping the league moving, and for that Andrew is the recipient of the 2030 WBH Dedication Award.

Congrats Andrew, thanks for you help with the league!

@Santiago de Cuba (USA) wrote:

Congrats Andrew, thanks for you help with the league!

Yes…leagues thrive on reports at times. Thanks Andrew! Cap_PDT_01_32

@Santiago de Cuba (USA) wrote:

Congrats to Warren on being GM of the Year! It’s been a long time since there was a third tier winner. Based on some quick research, it looks like MMD was the last third tier winner of this award in 2019.

Thanks…it’s been a great year for Bocas Del Toro…we have averaged over 81 wins/season over the last 4 years so it’s time for us to leave our friends in Venezuela and test our team against the 2nd Tier.

Luckily for me, the top 3 tiers didn’t have a dominant 75+ win team or they would have won the award I’m sure. Of course I’d much rather have the USA Title, but this year has been pretty solid for Bocas Del Toro. Hopefully the run continues into 2031.

@Tokorozawa (DOM) wrote:

@Santiago de Cuba (USA) wrote:

Congrats Andrew, thanks for you help with the league!

Yes…leagues thrive on reports at times. Thanks Andrew! Cap_PDT_01_32

I’m honored, and the card looks great! This league is the best damn OOTP league…period, and I’ll happily keep churning out those reports.