This week, we asked our writers to cast their vote for who they believe should win each of the major post-season awards. The results of those votes are below. We did not cast full ballots and use a points system as the BBWAA will – we just asked everyone to select the player they would cast a first place vote for. As you’ll see, a few of the awards had general consensus, but there was also quite a spread of opinions at some of the more open races.

American League MVP: Jose Bautista (16), Jacoby Ellsbury (9)

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Philadelphia Phillies skipper Charlie Manuel is expected to decide soon that Roy Oswalt will be the fourth starter for the club heading into the postseason. The decision obviously would come at the expense of 23-year-old standout Vance Worley, whose rookie season has made some folks in the City of Brotherly Love wonder if he’s the real fourth ace in this star-laden rotation.

Certainly, Manuel’s decision would have been expected in April when the Phillies entered the season with Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels and Oswalt on staff; but a flurry of ineffective starts — and two trips to the disabled list — have marred Oswalt’s season. Worley, meanwhile, now looks like the guy who should have been manning that fourth spot all along. His ERA is 3.00 — compared with Oswalt’s 3.66 — and Worley’s defense-neutral estimators all are about a third of a run better than Oswalt’s, as well.

So should Oswalt really be such a lock for that start? Well, here’s the way to tell: Tell both pitchers to warm up, and then put the radar gun on the 34-year-old’s fastball. If it’s above 91.5 mph, put in Oswalt. If it’s below — well, you know the answer.

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Georg Cantor (a) discovered multiple infinities and (b) went insane.

Tampa Bay (7) at New York AL (10) | 19:05 ET
A Note Regarding Your Taste
If your taste, reader, is for the baseball game with the most immediate of playoff consequences, then tonight’s contest between New York NL and St. Louis (below) ought to be your preference.

Why That Is
Why that is, is because owing to yet another Cardinal victory and another Brave loss last night, the former sits only 1.5 games behind the latter for the NL Wild Card.

What That Means in Terms of Percentages
In terms of percentages — again, per Cool Standings — St. Louis now has just under a 35% chance of making the postseason; Atlanta, a 64% chance.

As for This Game
As for this game, it offers a team (i.e. the Rays) with less of a playoff chance (4.5%), but with the added draw of left-hander Matt Moore’s first major-league start.

Matt Moore’s Minor-League Line
Here’s Matt Moore’s line between Double- and Triple-A this season: 155.0 IP, ∞ K/9, 2.7 BB/9, 0.6 HR/9.

A Note a Matt Moore’s Line
Just looking at it now, it appears as though Matt Moore struck out infinity batters this season. Hadn’t realized that.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Rays Television.

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Aramis Ramirez is ready to leave the Chicago Cubs. After eight-and-a-half seasons with the team, Ramirez’s agent announced that his client will test the free agent market this off-season. While Ramirez  initially was hesitant to leave Chicago, he apparently changed his mind once he realized the Cubs are transitioning into a rebuilding period. Ramirez, 33, has also acknowledged that he wants to move to a winning team as he transitions to the twilight of his career.
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As of this writing, Bronson Arroyo is making his 31st start of the season. Remarkably — perhaps because his opponent is the hapless Houston Astros — he hasn’t given up a home run (or even an earned run) through eight scoreless innings (as of press time).

This is remarkable because through Arroyo’s first 30 starts and 182 innings he had allowed a whopping 44 home runs. He is only the sixth player in history to ever reach this mark and only the 23rd pitcher to ever allow even 40 home runs in a season. Of both groups, Arroyo’s 182 innings is the lowest (second is Eric Milton‘s forgettable 2005 campaign, also coming as a member of the Reds). Only Shawn Boskie’s 1996 campaign featured fewer starts (28), and he also made nine relief appearances.

Interestingly enough, this 40-homer club actually features some of the best pitchers of all time, and it even includes a few very solid seasons. Among these 23 seasons we see Hall of Famers Bert Blyleven (twice), Robin Roberts (thrice), Ferguson Jenkins and Phil Niekro (twice), as well as Jack Morris, who remains on the ballot. And although giving up home runs is obviously the worst possible outcome for a pitcher, most of these guys still managed to perform well even with 40 or more homers allowed.

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Several pitchers like Max Scherzer, Brandon Morrow and Danny Duffy have struggled with control this season. Each has thrown a ton of pitches resulting in both walks and strikeouts. The number of pitches they have thrown has limited the amount of innings they are able to pitch in a game. By limiting the number of pitches thrown per batter, a pitcher will end up increasing the number of innings pitched over an entire season.

Many pitchers take a quite a few pitches to get through a game. The main causes for more pitches is a high number of strikeouts and walks. Each of these events take a certain number of pitches, 3 or 4 at minimum, for the event to happen. A pitcher that walks and strikes out 3 batters an inning will not allow any runs to score. Each of these innings will take 21 pitches to get through. The problem is that they will only throw 5 to 6 innings since the pitcher will be at 100 pitches near the beginning of the 5th inning. Depending on the pitcher’s pitch count limit, they will not even make to the 6th inning to qualify for a quality start.

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Eric Seidman and I had a conversation about pitchers, pitching metrics, and the end of season awards last night. The fruits of that conversation are below.

Dave: So, I took a sneak peak at the FanGraphs author awards ballot, and you’re kind of a traitor. You can make a strong case for Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee, but instead, you pick Clayton Kershaw, even though he has a WAR of 6.8 compared to Halladay’s 8.0. You’re from Philadelphia, you write for FanGraphs, and you pick the pitcher with a lower WAR who doesn’t play for the Phillies? Don’t you know that you’re supposed to be a slave to the stats, and our most recognizable stat says Halladay has been better? You’ve got some explaining to do.

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Almost certainly a metaphor.

New York NL (4) at St. Louis (3) | 20:15 ET
What the Deal Is
The deal with this game is that, after winning last night — but also letting the Braves win, too — that the Cardinals are 2.5 games back in the NL Wild Card race.

What That Means to Cool Standings
What that whole thing means to Cool Standings is that the Cardinals have about an 18% chance of making the playoffs.

The Cardinals’ Playoff Chances, A Brief History Of
Looking over the internet records, one finds that St. Louis’s odds of making the playoffs are the highest they’ve been since August 15th, when they (i.e. the playoff odds) were 20%.

The Cardinals’ Playoff Chances in Context
To get a sense of how good the Cardinals’ chances are, consider that the Rays’ — who everyone’s freaking about — consider that their chances of making the postseason are less than 9%.

Other Things People Are Freaking About
All of the things, all of the time.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Mets Television.

Two Other Games
Tampa Bay (7) at New York AL (10) | 13:05 ET
In which AL East titans clash and, just as with the real Titans, are gruesomely slayed by the Olympic gods — i.e. Must-See TV.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Rays Television.

Tampa Bay (7) at New York AL (10) | 19:05 ET
In which the second verse is the same as the first.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Rays Television.

Also Playing
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.8.

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