MVP '05 Update -- Who's The Champ?

Torii Hunter -- MVP Baseball 2005 (photo from IGN.com)

The 2005 MLB season has come to a close, with the Minnesota Twins winning it all, undoubtably.

Riding an impressive 108-game winning streak into the post-season, there was no way that I could be stopped.

The Twins took down the New York Yankees in the Divisional Series, then the Boston Red Sox in the American League Championship Series. Finally, The Team of Destiny swept the San Francisco Giants 4 games to nothing in the World Series. Celebration. Champagne. Ladies!

My winning streak darn-near came to an end during the ALCS against the Red Sox. One of my created players who plays for the Red Sox, Mike, hit a home run off my pitcher in Game 4 in the first inning. The Red Sox held a 1-0 lead until the top of the ninth when Torii Hunter led off the inning with a base hit to right field, followed by two-run shot over the Green Monster from Justin Morneau.

Overall, the stats from my guys were impressive. Johan Santana and Brad Radke both went 30-0 over the season, with Santana chalking up 285 K's. Santana ended up getting every major award there is, including the AL Cy Young, AL MVP, All-Star Game MVP, and World Series MVP.

A call-up from Triple-A, Matt Guerrier (after Joe Mays went out with an injury for the rest of the season), went 12-0 in his stretch to nab the AL Rookie of the Year award.

Justin Morneau went on to win the AL Triple Crown award, with a .367 batting average, 58 home runs, and 147 RBI's.

But the fun part was the off-season. I had a bunch of guys whose contracts were up at the end of the year, including Santana, Morneau, and other clutch guys like Michael Cuddyer, Lew Ford, Carlos Silva, and Kyle Lohse. It was going to get interesting.

I ended up resigning most of the guys that I had before, but I lost a few guys like Luis Rivas and Joe Mays. Santana ended up getting the biggest raise on the team (no doubt), in which he went from making 1.5M/season to 6.5M/season for 2 years. Salary cap issues? Damn right!

The good thing is that the rest of my created players were picked up for BIG BUCKS through free agency. My character was picked up by the Yankees (damn!), so now I'm teammates with one of my brothers-in-law. My other brother-in-law is a catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Other guys, like Robb, he plays for the Colorado Rockies. Tim pitches for the Chicago Cubs, and Sean now plays outfield for the San Francisco Giants (a replacement for the all-powerful "Jim Dowd" [Barry Bonds-like character], who retired after 2005).

The 2006 season should be an interesting one! Stay tuned!