Another season gone by

I'm posting right now because I just don't care. I know I'm supposed to be "night owl" and everything and post only at night, but nobody is letting me do that.

I didn't post yesterday because a 12-hour workday. And I'm up right now because a day off (and let's get on with it!) And I'm not advance publishing for a more suitable night owl-type time because blogger is an obstinate pain in the ass these days and doesn't do anything that you say anymore.

See? Just right now blogger told me an error occurred while trying to publish my post. I'M NOT TRYING TO PUBLISH A POST.

There it goes again.

Screw this, I'm logging off.

Yes, I know. "I have unsaved changes." I'll take my chances.

...

OK, I'm back. And guess what? Everything is here. I didn't lose any of my type. Blogger with its ideal threats ...

Oh for the love of ... another error occurred. Shut up, blogger.

I SAID SHUT UP!

OK, the message disappeared by itself.

All right, where was I?

Right, yes. Blogger doesn't let me do anything anymore.

Did you know blogger doesn't automatically notify the Twitter folks when I've published a post anymore? That stopped about a week ago. So there's another thing that it ...

"Another error occurred ..." Yes, we're all proud of you. I'm just going to ignore that pink "another error occurred" bar from now on.

So, uh ... where was I again? Oh right, I'm up at 8 in the morning and I'm publishing anyway.

Let's get on with the post.

I removed the "Dodger Player Of The Day" feature from the sidebar, as is the ritual at this time of year because we can have only crappy teams in the World Series for ... oh, the last two decades.

As usual, (ignoring pink bar again), I total up the leaders in Player Of The Day and feature them here. So I'll do that for you now:

1. Zack Greinke - 13
1. Clayton Kershaw - 13

(Pink bar isn't going away)

3. Hyun-Jin Ryu - 11

(OK, now it's gone)

4. Adrian Gonzalez - 10
5. Yasiel Puig - 7
5. Hanley Ramirez - 7
7. Andre Ethier - 6
8. Chris Capuano  - 5

(Pink bar is back -- DISMISS -- oh, it left again)

8. Juan Uribe - 5
10. Matt Kemp - 4
11. Mark Ellis - 3
12. Carl Crawford - 2
12. A.J. Ellis - 2
12. Stephen Fife - 2
12. Ricky Nolasco - 2
16. Jerry Hairston Jr. - 1
16. Ramon Hernandez - 1
16. Paco Rodriguez - 1
16. Skip Schumaker - 1

So, if I was going to select a Hitter of the Year and Pitcher of the Year, it would be Adrian Gonzalez and a tie between Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw.

I think everyone knows that Kershaw is a top candidate for the Cy Young Award again. But if Greinke hadn't been attacked by that brain-dead hitter I think he would have racked up a couple more PODs and passed Kershaw. If you ask me, Greinke was possibly more important to the Dodgers' trip to the NLCS than Kershaw.

By the way, I just realized that's another thing blogger wouldn't let me do -- it refused to update my Player of the Day list once the NLCS started. So, the fine showings by Ryu and Greinke in the NLCS weren't recorded. I think blogger is really starting to take this "this is a free feature" thing seriously.

Anyway, as the list shows, there were a handful of overachievers, and a few players who were either injured/not with the team for very long/need to do better. Carl Crawford, I know you got your ass going in the playoffs, but what was that regular season about?

But to me, the Matt Kemp card atop sums up the season.

What could the Dodgers have done with a healthy Kemp? Or a healthy Greinke? Or a healthy Crawford, Hanley Ramirez or Ethier? They were one of four teams remaining. But I think they could've been playing the Red Sox now with a little less DL time.

What could they have done if I didn't have to see Schumaker or Nick Punto every game (notice no "Player of the Days" for him -- and don't give me that "what he does doesn't show up in the boxscore" garbage because the day sliding into first shows up in boxscores is the day I stop looking at boxscores).

Anyway, that's this year's update. Sadly, POD won't show up again until next spring -- when the Dodgers beat another team that's jealous of them, the Snakes in the Grass, in Australia.

Also, this past year I spent too much time musing about why people don't like Puig or the Dodgers or whatever. Next year and the years that follow I'm not doing that. If people don't want to like the greatest team there is, that's not my concern.

So, now I'm going to add some cards here -- if blogger will let me -- from a Twitter friend of mine, John, who lives in Canada. Many thanks for the cards.

All of these guys are either players who appeared in the POD list or I'd like to appear in the POD list or Duke Snider.

You can figure out which is which yourself.

All right, blogger, what's it gonna be? ...

Yaaaaaayyyyy, blogger! You still do something!!!

Thanks for reading at this early hour.

If I don't collapse from exhaustion, I may actually post at my usual time later tonight, too. If blogger lets me.

OK, I'm hitting "publish automatically" now.

You can expect to see this pop up on your blog roll in about three days.