Sea Dogs Annual Awards Announced

The Sea Dogs announced their annual award winners on Sunday. The winners, selected by fan ballot, are:

Citizen of the Year: Catcher Alberto Concepcion. Concepcion apparently made himself available to many community events all season long.

10th Player Award: Raul Nievez. Nievez is a super-utility player who (I believe) played every position but catcher during the season. While not a good hitter, Nievez is a fine glove man and his versatility is quite valuable on the 23-man minor league rosters.

Pitcher of the Year: Jon Lester. There have been lots of terrific pitchers wearing Sea Dogs uniforms this year, but Lester is the most obvious choice. He's been in the rotation all season long, and leads the team in wins and strikeouts, and ERA among those who will finish the year with enough innings to qualify. Lester will finish the season with the Eastern League lead in strikeouts and he's still in contention for the league ERA title.

MVP: David Murphy. There was no one player who stepped up and became the obvious choice for this award (other than Dustin Pedroia, but he's been in Pawtucket for two months now). Murphy is kind of a "by default" choice, but he's still had a very good season, leading the qualifying Sea Dogs in average, OBP, slugging and RBI. He's also shown great range and a terrific arm in defending center field in Hadlock. With his bat coming around in the second half of the season, Murphy is starting to look again like the player the Sox drafted in the first round of the 2003 draft.

I plan to give out my own end-of-season awards at the completion of the regular season next week. It'll be fun to see how they compare. My guess is that Lester will also be my selection for pitcher of the year.