I certainly wish those who voted upon them would do so more responsibly, but I enjoy following them, nonetheless.

but in real life, that guy gets another $250 million instead of getting his head bashed in.

I also don't care about these awards. I don't really care about the Hof either.

These are awards which go back with the history of baseball and mean a lot to the players who receive the awards.  Truly a special achievement.  Rookie of the Year is also cool to honor the young guys who have worked so hard to get to this level.  

Manager, Comeback, Silver Slugger....Don't care or pay attention, but the big ones mean a lot to me and they defintely mean a lot to the guys who play the game.

And for me, there is no night longer or darker than the long dark night that is the offseason.    Once there are games to watch, I won't remember or care who won an award this winter, but reading or hearing about these meaningless contests is better than reading or hearing about football for me.  I do find the awards that have a strong, tacky commercial tie-in to be less credible than others.  

Like rfloh, I do enjoy the debate portion.  But I think the awards are most useful when looking back from a distance at a player's career.  I'm thinking of Barry Zito here; his 2002 Cy Young is a reminder that he once was legitimately regarded as one of the very best pitchers in baseball.

doesn't influence the gold glove and I'll pay closer attention. That's my official position on how meaningful the awards are.

before the fall classic.

It is pathetic to see award like the Pepto Bismo Pitcher's release of the season come out when no one cares about baseball.

Who would have thought away-from-game tennis would have much more interesting story lines than away-from-game baseball?

If you "appreciate short-term and long-term individual player achievements", and don't mean "individual achievement without context, without a larger purpose, is meaningless" in any moral sense, why was Bonds' 2007 season meaningless? Because he hit #756 while playing on a losing team?

That doesn't really add up. Unless:

1] you do mean it in a moral sense.

2] you don't think any individual feat achieved while playing for a non-World Series winning team is meaningful

3] I am totally misunderstanding everything, due to my hyper-caffeinated state and preoccupation with trying to think of the last movie Brian De Palma made that didn't suck.

Whatever the case, I will say that employing "amalgamate" and "accumulate" in the same sentence kind of ruled, and totally overshadows any issues relating to analytical coherence.

...but like Nico I don't like the criteria that many of the voters use to select them...and they should, like the NFL and NBA, announce them just before or during the postseason.  Otherwise, it's like the Pro Bowl -- a mere afterthought.

I guess it's better than having an awards show a la the NHL...

1. The most important thing is the A's getting to the post season and, subsequently, how far they advance. If the A's aren't in the hunt, the season becomes depressing.

2. That's when I turn to individual growth like 1st half Dan Haren or 1st 1/3 Chad Gaudin, "diamonds in the rough" like Cust or Shannon Stewart and, of course, young players fulfilling expectations like Buck and Barton. That eases some of the pain and infuses some somewhat soothing hope into an otherwise unpleasant year. I can't tell you how much Matt Stairs, Geronimo Berroa and Ben Grieve helped me get through some tough years.

3. Individual awards are nice because they give the A's some national attention and get them in the east coast dominated "conversation". This was probably more important in the early 2000s when Giambi and then Tejada won MVPs to help vault the "overachieving" A's into that "conversation". But . . .

The awards themselves are to be taken with a grain of salt considering the subjectivity involved and the bizarre criteria that the media members who vote on these awards ascribe. Not to mention how the specific bizarre criteria varies from voter-to-voter.

What is the criteria for an MVP? Would Chavez have had a chance in hell to win his first Gold Glove without his good offensive numbers? Would he have been able to win his 6th with his crappy offensive numbers without having won the first several? When I was 11, I thought the fact that Walt Weiss won the ROY was an indication that he'd be a star. When Bobby Crosby won his, it meant very little considering the competition.

So the awards feel good, but it's sort of hollow because I know better than to ascribe any significance as it relates to the team's ability to get into the post-season. Kind of like eating a candy bar when you're feeling sluggish.

What I dislike is not the concept of the awards, but their "monetization" -- that is, when they are really just a vehicle for the sponsor to collect names and addresses of voters, for some ulterior commercial purpose (Cf. Viagra Comeback Player -- what's next, the Enzyte Home Run Derby Long-and-Deep Award?).  

MLB doesn't know when to stop with the commercialization.  Cheapening the awards to the point where fans won't vote who don't have adequate spam-killers is way past that point.  They lose credibility, and then fans don't vote, and then sponsors won't sponsor, and then...

...Monkeytopia!.