The All-Star Game is tonight, and after it we’ll have a dearth of baseball to watch until Friday, so there really isn’t all that much for me to write about this week. As such, I’ll be deciding who’d win each of Major League Baseball’s most prestigious awards if they handed them out at the halfway point too. I know it’s what everybody else is doing, but the last thing the world needs is more All-Star Game coverage.

AL MVP: Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels

If the award was for the American League’s best player, there’s no question it would go to the Ranger’s Josh Hamilton. Hamilton leads Trout (and the majors) in slugging (.635), OPS (1.016), runs created, and offensive winning percentage. If you’re into more traditional statistics, Hamilton’s got 27 home runs and 75 RBI to Trout’s 12 and 40. But alas, this is the award for the league’s most valuable player, not its best. Which, by the way, is why Peyton Manning should have been the NFL MVP for the past decade, including the year he got hurt. Nay, especially the year he got hurt. Do you think a good team goes 14-2 and 10-6 then just up and drops to 2-14? But I digress.

So what makes Trout so valuable, so Manning-esque, if you will? Well, the Texas Rangers are 52-34, 18 games over .500. Hamilton’s been a tremendous part of that, don’t get me wrong, but the people of Texas also have 7 other All-Stars to thank. And when Hamilton got off to an indescribably hot start in April and May, the Rangers went 31-20, giving them a winning percentage of .608. Since, ol’ Josh has cooled off, to say the least, hitting .214 with six homers in June and July. But don’t tell the Rangers, because I don’t think they’ve noticed yet. Texas has gone 21-14 over that stretch, which makes for a winning percentage of .600. The Angels, on the other hand, have four All-Stars, including Trout, and a record of 48-38. “48-38, that’s not bad at all,” you say. But wait, the Angels were 6-14 before calling Trout up from Triple A. Since he joined the team, they’re 42-24. If the only Angel games that counted were those that included Trout, they’d be 18 games over .500 too.

Then, there’s the stats. Sure, Hamilton’s got the lead in those other things. But Trout is hitting .341, and has an OBP of .397. He also leads the AL with 26 stolen bases. Those numbers have been an enormous factor in his scoring 57 runs in 64 games. The AL runs leader, Ian Kinsler (who plays for the Rangers, by the way), has 63, but he’s played in 20 more games.

NL MVP: Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh Pirates

As much as I desperately want to give this one to David Wright, the nod has got to go to McCutchen over both he and Joey Votto for many of the same reasons Trout won over Hamilton. Find me one sportswriter who predicted the Pittsburgh Pirates would be in first place at the All-Star break. Just one. You can’t, and while some might say no one saw the Pirates coming, the truth is no one saw McCutchen coming, because they’re one and the same.

Andrew McCutchen is the Pittsburgh Pirates’ offense. Sure, they’re in first place, but they rank 21st in runs scored, 22nd in batting average, and 29th in on-base percentage. A team that’s tied for last in the National League in the most important stat in baseball is in first place (take that, Billy Beane!), and the reason why wears number 22.

McCutchen’s .362 batting average is the best in the league, and he’s in the top 5 in home runs and RBI. But more important are his ranks relative to the rest of the Pirates. He leads the teams in hits, runs, RBI, average, on-base percentage, slugging, stolen bases, and home runs. Frankly, I’m not only concerned that the Pirates wouldn’t be a first place team without Andrew McCutchen, but that they would simply cease to exist.

AL Cy Young: Jered Weaver, Los Angeles Angels

This just might be the closest contest on the list. It’s really a toss-up between Weaver, Justin Verlander, and Chris Sale, but my coin kept coming up Weaver. Verlander might be more exciting, with his 128 strikeouts to Weaver’s 73, but there’s no doubt Weaver’s been the better pitcher overall. The 29 year-old righthander has the majors’ best ERA (1.96) and WHIP (0.90).

As if that wasn’t enough, Weaver threw a no-hitter on May 2, and he’s only given up more than 3 earned runs twice this season. If you take away his May 13 outing against the Rangers, in which he went 3.1 innings, and gave up 10 hits and 8 earned runs, Weave would be 10-0 with a 1.25 ERA and a whip of 0.816. And c’mon, everybody gets one.

NL Cy Young: R.A. Dickey, New York Mets

Little could please me more than to announce that R.A. Dickey will be taking home the imaginary trophy for mid-season NL Cy Young. Unless of course you didn’t know the Mets got their first no-hitter this year. Oh, you’d heard? Alright, moving on.

Yes, that’s right! At the tender age of 37, born again knuckleballer R.A. Dickey has become not just an elite pitcher, but the best pitcher in the National League this season, and don’t you dare say otherwise. Dickey has fluttered his way to a 12-1 record, a 2.40 ERA, and a .093 WHIP. That’s not all, he’s got 123 strikeouts in 120 innings pitched and needs to whiff just 11 more batters to match his career high.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective, shall we? Dickey leads the NL in WHIP, wins above replacement, wins, complete games, and games with double digit strikeout totals. He also went a full month without giving up an earned run, and in June, he pitched two consecutive one-hitters.

Now, guys who’ve thrown knucklers have been given plaques in the Hall of Fame (Phil Niekro, Hoyt Wilhelm, Ted Lyons), and one, Dutch Leonard, even started an All-Star Game in 1943 (Dickey should have been the second, but if we walk down that road I’m not sure we’ll come back). But a knuckleballer has never, not once, won a Cy Young, so let’s hope Dickey keeps this up and turns my imaginary trophy into real brass.

AL Rookie of the Year: Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels

When your MVP is a rookie, it logically follows that he’ll be rookie of the year as well. Mike Trout as AL Rookie of the year is perhaps the only no-brainer on this list. Seriously, it’s not even close.

I’ve already told you all about Trout’s stats and how important he is to his team, so instead let’s discuss something else: the rarity of a player winning both the MVP and Rookie of the year in the same season. If this were to happen to Trout (which it probably won’t, but these are the mid-season awards damn it), he’d be just the third man to accomplish the feat. Only Fred Lynn (1975) and Ichiro Suzuki (2001) have done it before. And Ichiro wasn’t really a rookie, the dude was 27 and already had nearly a decade of professional baseball under his belt when he showed up stateside.

NL Rookie of the Year: Bryce Harper, Washington Nationals

You could certainly make the case for Diamonbacks lefty Wade Miley and his 9-5 record, 3.04 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 70 strikeouts, but weighing the pros and cons of this one always leaves me centered on one thing: Bryce Harper is 19 years old. Did that not hit you hard enough? How about this? Bryce Harper was born in 1992. Yep, that did it.

Sure, Miley is having a great year for any pitcher, let alone a rookie, but he’s doing it at age 25, right around the time pitchers are supposed to be coming into their own. But again, Harper is 19, and statistics indicate hitters peak between the ages of 27 and 29. He’s only going to improve over the next 8-10 years, likely bringing a good deal of woe to my Mets while he’s at it, but for now we’ve got to just stand in awe at the single best teenage player in Major League history.

Yeah, I said it. Harper is hitting .282 with 8 homers, 10 stolen bases, 25 RBI, and 43 runs scored in 63 games. Only two players in history have equaled or surpassed Harper’s .282/.354/.472/.826 line while still in their teenage years. They were Mel Ott (a future hall of famer) in 1928 and Tony Conigliaro in 1964. But neither was led a first place team in both average and on-base percentage, as Harper does with the Nationals, nor were they asked to routinely play a position entirely foreign to them before getting to the bigs, as Harper does in center field.

A knuckleballer has never won a Cy Young and a teenager has never been rookie of the year, but if things keep going as they have been, both those things are going to change.

Follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

It’s 2012, in case you hadn’t heard, and by now I’d think most baseball fans are well aware that a pitcher’s win-loss record is worthless. It’s simply not a reliable way of charting performance. Wins, like RBI, are a function of opportunity, not ability. We know that, on the forefront of our consciousness. But then why does R.A. Dickey’s record of 11-1 give me such a sense of smug satisfaction? And why is Cliff Lee’s 0-4 line troubling Phillies’ fans, and more importantly, the pitcher himself?

Well, because behind the facade, our perception of baseball, like so many things, is rarely guided by the parts that help make us calm, rational, or logical. That much was made perfectly clear over the weekend when Bill Baer, who writes for ESPN and runs the Phillies blog Crashburn Alley, began re-tweeting some “phan” responses to Lee’s most recent performance. You don’t need to scroll through to figure out the message, most involved the pitcher’s name and a certain four-letter word, so I’ll give you one swear-free highlight: @GutterTheGreat said, “I think the man love for Cliff Lee needs to end – don’t give me this run support shit or about the poor fielding.”

Baer, being of sound mind, gave him something a little more in-depth. On Monday, he published an analysis of Lee’s performance, arguing that the pitcher’s woes have not all been of his own design. Baer gets plenty specific and sabermetric, but it’s simple enough to know that when a pitcher goes 10 innings without giving up a run, as Lee did on April 18, he should have at least one win. The article led to a retort from ESPN’s David Schoenfield entitled “Maybe Cliff Lee hasn’t been all that good,” I’ll wager you can figure out what that one was about on your own.

Baer’s piece began with a response to another, more collected tweet. User @alexrolfe said, “what’s weird to me is that the no wins makes people reevaluate lee instead of reevaluating wins. why is that?” You’ll get all the coverage you need on Lee specifically from Baer and Schoenfield, so here’s where I’m going with all this: Indeed, random internet person, why is that?

Let’s start by considering what a win is. MLB official rule 10.17 defines the winning pitcher as one “whose team assumes a lead while such pitcher is in the game, or during the inning on offense in which such pitcher is removed from the game, and does not relinquish such lead.” Of course, the rule is different for starters. In a game that goes the full nine innings, a starter has to pitch at least five to get a win.

You know you’ve got a silly statistic when it’s perfectly reasonable (number-wise) that Jon Rauch can have three wins and Lee none. Yet fans, players, and front offices still give the win-loss record a tremendous amount of undeserved influence. Even if every fan thought the way Bill Baer does, you better believe Cliff Lee would still be pissed off about his lack of a win. If concentrating on getting one is a good way for Cliff to self-motivate, so be it. But it shouldn’t go any farther than that.

There a million different stats and sabermetrics out there, but the Cy Young Award is given to the “best pitcher” in each league. It’s one of the game’s few simplicities. Want the Cy Young? Be the best. That’s it.

In 2004, Roger Clemens won the NL Cy Young because of his 2.98 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, and 218 strikeouts in 214.1 innings pitched. He was the best. Supposedly. We’re sane, we know that wins are entirely out of a pitcher’s control. Clemens was the best so he won the honor, right? In any other year perhaps, but not 2004. That was the year, Ben Sheets‘ line looked like this: 2.70 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 264 strikeouts and just 32 walks in 237 innings pitched. Along with his 8:1 strikeout to walk ratio, the league’s best by a mile, Sheets outpitched Clemens based on every major pitching stat. He was in fact, though not in name, the best. So what gives?

Well, he outpitched Clemens in every major pitching stat but one, and I think you know which. Sheets had a record of 12-14, while Clemens was 18-4. Yet Sheets’ Brewers went 67-94 that year, while Clemens and the Astros brought home a record of 92-70. Given that, any sane person might consider Sheets’ 12 wins on that miserable squad to be the more impressive count. But the trophy sits on Clemens’ shelf, along with his other six Cy Youngs, and, I imagine, the cream and the clear. Try and tell me wins didn’t influence the voting, or that the best pitcher won.

We like to think we’re living in a more civilized time. Everyone loves to point out that Felix Hernandez brought home the AL Cy Young in 2010 despite a 13-12 record. But 2004 wasn’t all that long ago, and the rabbit hole goes far deeper than awards.

You all know how I feel about closers, and “saves.” Well, I was wrong when I wrote that piece. Don’t worry, the notion of a closer is still ridiculous, but I shouldn’t have said “a save situation is the only time a manager makes a decision based on arbitrary numerals rather than what’s going to help his team win.” Wins will do that too. Imagine this scenario: your team’s up 8-2, the starter’s on the mound with two outs in the fifth when he suddenly gives up four runs that were inarguably his fault, and there are still a couple men on base. Any other pitcher gives up four runs in an inning and he’s getting the hook. But nine times out of ten your manager will leave him in there for a while longer, hoping he can get that third out and be in line for a win. Suddenly, the pitcher getting a win is more important than the team getting one.

Better offense, pitch counts, specialized relievers, and a thousand other changes have all contributed to the ever increasing worthlessness of the win-loss record. But the stat still affects contracts, awards, All-Star selections, fan opinion, and sometimes even a pitcher’s self-worth. It’s 2012, yet there are still those among us who give wins the respect they were due in 1912. To those people, listen closely: wins are a relic of a different era, whether or not it was a better era is entirely subjective, but the present can only be right now. And right now, wins and losses should not be anywhere but the periphery of statistical analysis.

The Texas Rangers drafted R.A. Dickey with the 18th overall pick in the 1996 Major League Baseball Draft. Back then, his stuff was dime-a-dozen. His fastball could hit the high-80’s, he had a breaking ball when he needed it, and a forkball he called “The Thing.” Dickey first broke into the bigs in 2001. Between then and 2006 he posted a 5.72 ERA in 266 innings.

A lot of people thought 2004 was going to be the turning point in Dickey’s career. He started that season 4-1, but when things were all said and done he’d gone 6-7 with an ERA of 5.61. Dickey first began experimenting with the knuckleball in 2005, and Texas gave him a chance to use it as a starter in 2006. In his first time on the mound that year, Dickey gave up six home runs. Six. Matching the record of another knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield. He never pitched for the Rangers again.

Fast forward to 2010. The New York Mets are making their first spring cuts, and the 35-year-old Dickey, who’d been trying to latch on as the team’s last guy out of the bullpen, is sent to minor league camp.

Alright, let’s fast forward again, to last night, when the very same Dickey (well, he’s 37 now) threw his second one-hitter… in a row. To top it off, he did it against Buck Showalter’s Baltimore Orioles. Guess who was managing the Rangers when Dickey gave up those six home runs. Guess whose idea it was for Dickey to start throwing the knuckler.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t say thank you to [Showalter]. He’s the one that gave me the opportunity to cultivate that pitch at the foundational levels down in the minor leagues with the Texas Rangers. He believed I could do it. Now, it took a while for me to get it. He gave me the… I’m trying to think of the right word. He gave me the canvas to be able to operate on. He was the guy; he and Orel [Hershisher] kind of pushed me in that direction. I’m thankful they did,” Dickey told ESPN.

Now get this: it’s the first time since 1988, when Dave Stieb of the Toronto Blue Jays did it, that any Major Leaguer has thrown two consecutive one-hitters. The last time a National Leaguer did it was in 1944, 65 years ago, when Jim Tobin of the Boston Braves accomplished the feat. Only 10 pitchers have allowed one hit or fewer in consecutive games since 1900. And R.A. Dickey? R.A. Dickey is the only man in the history of modern baseball to throw back-to-back one-hitters with at least 10 strikeouts in each. Last night, Dickey fanned 13 Orioles, and on June 13 in Tampa Bay, the man struck out 12.

R.A. Dickey was a “bust” of a first-round pick who had an RADickeylous (sorry) name for his forkball. Was. Now, with 68 games (or 42 percent) of the season in the books, R.A. Dickey is the leading candidate for the NL Cy Young. He’s also the Mets’ ace, which might not mean much if their roster didn’t contain the two-time Cy Young winning, no-hitter throwing, Johan Santana. But it does.

Dickey is now 11-1, no other Mets pitcher has ever reached 10 games over .500 so quickly. While Dickey did it in 68 games, the previous Met record belong to Tom Seaver, who reached 13-3 in the 77th game of the Mets’ 1969 season. Dickey already owns the Mets record for most consecutive scoreless innings with 32 2/3, but he’s also gone 42 2/3 innings without giving up an earned run, the second best streak in franchise history. The team record is Doc Gooden’s, who went 49 innings in 1985.

But enough about the Mets. Dickey’s 11 wins lead the majors, and he’s tied for the league lead in ERA (2.00), strikeouts (103), and complete games (three). And for those who complain about baseball being a “slow” game, last night’s contest took all of 127 minutes.

Anything could happen from now until October, but R.A. Dickey is the best pitcher in the majors this season, and 42 percent is by no means insignificant.

In case you haven’t heard, the Washington Nationals are a thing now. No, really. At 36-23, they’ve got the second best record in baseball, the best team ERA, and as much as it pains me to say it, this little thing called Bryce Harper, luckily sans “skullet,” which makes it hurt a little less.

Here’s the thing about the Nats though, after Harper they don’t hit very well, or at all really. They’re at the back end of the majors with 230 runs (25th), a .243 batting average (24th), and a paltry .311 on base percentage (24th). How then are they at the top of the NL East, one of the league’s most contentious divisions, by a comfortable three games over the Braves and five over the Mets and Marlins? Well if it’s not the hitting…

Let’s talk about this Nats pitching staff. As mentioned, their 2.98 ERA is the best in the majors, they’ve also got a league best 1.14WHIP  and .220 batting average against. Here’s the thing about their rotation, Edwin Jackson (he of the 3.02 ERA) is their number four starter. Four. Ahead of him they’ve got Jordan Zimmermann (2.91), Gio Gonzalez (2.35), and phenom Stephen Strasburg (2.41). So if your team’s playing the Nationals on any given night, there’s an 80 percent chance they’ll be trying to hit a guy with an ERA of 3.02 or less. Think about that for a second. And as much as I love Johan Santana and R.A. Dickey, no team in the league has a 1-2 punch better than Strasburg and Gonzalez, who Grantland’s Shane Ryan called “the most dynamic Washington duo since Mondale-Ferraro fever swept the District in ’84.”

With a rotation like that, they’ve probably got an awful bullpen, right? I mean everyone’s got an awful bullpen. Nope. National relievers have the NL’s fourth best combined ERA, 3.12. But that’s OK, their closer’s injured and having a good closer means everything, right? Wrong. Even if closer was a worthwhile baseball position and not just a money-making tool, the absence of Drew Storen (the team’s first-round pick in 2009), who had 43 saves and a 2.75 ERA last year, hasn’t hurt the Nationals any. Since stepping into the role Tyler Clippard is eight for eight in save opportunities. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s got guys like Sean Burnett (1.35 ERA, 23 K’s in 20 innings pitched) and Craig Stammen (1.80 ERA, 32 K’s in 30 innings pitched) behind him.

But up there, when I said “the Washing Nationals are doing it right,” I wasn’t really talking about any of this stuff. Well, except the wins. What I really meant was the way the Nats are handling things behind the scenes. There’s only one way for a team that won 69 games in 2010 and 59 in 2009 and 2008 to be this good this year: making the right draft choices, spending money on free agents when it’s called for (without wasting it when it isn’t, well besides Jayson Werth), and pulling the trigger, without spending too much, on high-risk high-reward pick ups. Edwin Jackson is a perfect example of the final strategy, the journeyman has bounced around the league and had a few successful seasons here and there, but he’s never been able to really pull it together. But Jackson is only 28, and now he’s having his best year ever, so an appropriate suffix for the previous sentence just might be “until now.”

Despite the record and accolades, the Nationals are in the bottom third of MLB payrolls (20th, $81,336,143). Furthermore, three of the team’s four best hitters: Harper, Ryan Zimmerman, and Ian Desmond, as well as Strasburg and Zimmermann (note the second “n”) are homegrown. It took a while for the Nats to get their shit together following the move from Montreal, but it’s happened, and now the team is here to stay. Don’t be surprised if you see them in the playoffs (or at least the NL East hunt) for the next few years.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Johan Santana threw the first no-hitter in New York Mets history on June 1. It took the Mets 51 seasons and 8,020 games to get their first no-no, so it’s been a long time coming. Believe me, prior to Friday a significant portion of Mets fans counted down from 27 until the opposing team got their first hit every single game. I know I did.

A no-hitter is a rarity. It’s an unbelievable attraction that can spark a team, lift a fan base, and give meaning to an entire season. Just listen for Ron Darling’s yelp when you watch Johan get the final strike. As far as I’m concerned, my team won the World Series on Friday. But when you’ve been playing as long as the Mets have is it more improbable that they finally got a no-hitter or that it took until now to get it?

Ironically enough, Baseball Prospectus published an article about the unlikelihood of the Mets not having a no-hitter just three days before Johan’s occurred. BP used a (relatively) simple equation to calculate the probability and ended up with this: “Between the birth of the Mets in 1962 and May 27th, 2012, there were 209,764 starts made by major-league pitchers, with 131 ending up as no-hitters. This gives us a p(no-hitter) of .000625.” Based on those odds as well as a more complicated model used by Rob Neyer and Bill James, the Mets should have thrown five no-hitters through their first 8,008 games. Should.

But looking past the raw numbers is when the real fun (or agony) begins. Major League Baseball officially recognizes 275 no-hitters between 1876 and 2012, including Johan’s. Over the same time period, a player has hit for the cycle 293 times, which makes the two feats near equally common. The Mets have never had a problem with the latter accomplishment. Ten players have hit for the cycle while wearing a Mets uniform, the most recent being Scott Hairston on April 27.

Furthermore, of the 275 no-hitters in history, 24 were thrown by pitchers who played for the Mets at some point in their careers. Most notable is Nolan Ryan, who threw seven no-hitters after leaving the team, but Dwight Gooden, Tom Seaver, David Cone, Mike Scott, and Phillip Humber each got one after their Mets career ended. Additionally, Al Leiter, Don Cardwell, Brett Saberhagen, Dock Ellis, Kenny Rogers, John Candelaria, Scott Erickson, and Dean Chance threw one, and Warren Spahn two no-hitters before coming to the Mets. Just to pile it on, Hideo Nomo threw two no-hitters as well, one before and one after playing for the Mets. Let’s just keep piling it on: A.J. Burnett, who was drafted by the Mets (although he never played for them), threw a no-no in 2001, while Alejandro Pena and Octavio Dotel combined with others for no-hitters in 1991 and 2003 respectively; which, of course, was after they’d left the Mets.

But wait, there’s more! Do you know who the Mets traded Nolan Ryan for? Of course not, because it’s Jim Fregosi, who had an astonishing five home runs and 32 RBI in 146 games over a season and a half with the team. Young Met superstars Gooden and Cone pitched their no-hitters for the cross-town rival Yankees. Perhaps most egregious of all, Tom Seaver, who pitched for the Mets for over a decade and was accurately nicknamed “The Franchise” (he remains the only player wearing a Mets hat on his Hall of Fame plaque), threw his no-hitter in 1978, his first full season on another team.

Don’t worry, I’m still not done. The Mets have collected 35 one-hitters over the years. Seaver had five of those, and three were no-hit bids that he lost in the ninth inning. Damn you Jimmy Qualls! The team’s most recent one-hitter came from R.A. Dickey on August 13, 2010. Whoever got the lone hit in that game? Why, starting pitcher Cole Hamels of course. Yes, you read that right. Starting pitcher Cole Hamels.

Just one more story. This whole drought/half-century of misery thing could have been avoided but for a Joe Amalfitano single in the Mets’ very first season. In June 1962, rookie pitcher Al Jackson gave up that single in the first inning of a double header before “settling down.” He  went the next nine innings without giving up a hit. The New York Times headline the following day: “A Single in First Spoils No-Hitter.”

There you have it, a much-abridged version of our tale of anguish. So please don’t roll your eyes every time you read that the Mets “finally got a no-hitter,” even when “finally” is in italics. And don’t you dare say the team (and its fans) didn’t earn or deserve it, even if Carlos Beltran’s ball did hit the line.