Howard Wins Players’ Award  (Associated Press)

ST. LOUIS - Ryan Howard of the Phillies was honored as player of the year by the Sporting News yesterday after a season in which he led the majors with 58 homers - the highest total since Barry Bonds’ record 73 in 2001 - and 149 RBIs.

The 26-year-old first baseman received 294 votes from 516 major-league players. David Ortiz of the Red Sox was second with 75 votes, followed by Albert Pujols of St. Louis with 32.

Detroit’s Jim Leyland was cited as AL manager of the year, and Joe Girardi, formerly of the Florida Marlins, won the NL award.

Johan Santana of the Minnesota Twins and Chris Carpenter of the St. Louis Cardinals were chosen as pitchers of the year. The top rookie awards went to Justin Verlander of the Tigers and Dan Uggla of the Marlins.

Comeback player awards went to Jim Thome of the Chicago White Sox and Nomar Garciaparra of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Chase Utley of the Phillies was a runaway selection as the National League’s best second baseman. He finished with a .309 batting average, with 32 homers, 102 RBIs, and a league-best 131 runs scored.

Phillies 1st baseman Ryan Howard is well-deserving of this award, as well as, hopefully the NL Most Valuable Player award for his unforgetable, awesome performance during the 2006 season.   And 2nd baseman Chase Utley’s solid 2006 performance establishes him as the National league’s best at his position.

Add to:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. | del.icio.us | digg | Furl | Reddit | YahooMyWeb |

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 5:52 pm and is filed under All Time Baseball Highlights, Real-Time Baseball News and Commentary, All Time Hitting Highlights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.