NL East Divisional All-Stars

Now that all the major awards for players are officially in the books, it's time to get started with these Divisional All-Star teams. If you haven't read the last post, the way they're organized allows me to use them to recap the 2009 season division by division through looking at the performances of the key players at each position in said division. Up first:

National League East

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POS	NAME	swp	swp/g		TEAM(S)
SS	Hanley Ramirez	2,537	16.8		FLA
CF	Shane Victorino	2,077	13.3		PHI
2B	Chase Utley	2,512	16.1		PHI
1B	Ryan Howard	2,660	16.6		PHI
3B	Ryan Zimmerman	2,340	14.9		WAS
RF	Jayson Werth	2,318	14.6		PHI
LF	Raul Ibanez	2,026	15.1		PHI
DH	Adam Dunn	2,142	13.5		WAS	LF/1B
C	Brian McCann	1,706	12.4		ATL
SP	Javier Vazquez	2,459	76.8		ATL
	Josh Johnson	2,093	63.4		FLA
	Jair Jurrjens	2,011	59.1		ATL
	Johan Santana	1,588	63.5		NYM
	J.A. Happ	1,557	44.5		PHI
CL	Francisco Rodriguez	1,559	22.3		NYM
RP	Ryan Madson	999	12.6		PHI
	Peter Moylan	688	7.9		ATL
	Kiko Calero	672	10.0		FLA
	Tyler Clippard	671	16.4		WAS
	Pedro Feliciano	642	7.3		NYM
P	Chan Ho Park	494	11.0		PHI

Albert Pujols winning his third NL MVP award with a landslide victory, ensures another wildly under-appreciated season by shortstop Hanley Ramirez. He won't be totally forgotten, seeing as he won the batting title and drove in over 100 runs. His stolen bases are down, but then again so are those of runner-up Jimmy Rollins, whose batting average has also plummeted over the past few years. Rollins did have a good enough season that I have a strong feeling that we'll see him again soon. Honorable mention: Atlanta's Yunel Escobar who's blossoming into a hot young player.

Shane Victorino was the clear choice in center field; his only competition was Nate McLouth, who qualified for the NL East by spending the majority of his season with Atlanta. The Flyin' Hawaiian's even played pretty good defense, earning his second Gold Glove award in 2009 (although we should all be familiar with the practice of (unofficially, of course) awarding such awards based on offensive production, as counter-intuitive as that sounds).

Chase Utley's quick bat might have made him a star, but his unheralded defensive and baserunning skills will eventually make him a household name. Time is against him as far as 'eventually' goes, as he'll turn 31 next month, but he was untouched as far as 2009 production goes. He finished ahead of Florida's Dan Uggla, another guy we'll probably see more of later.

After Ryan Howard, this was an embarrassingly weak year for the NL East's first basemen. But Howard himself didn't disappoint, putting up even more impressive numbers than last year. He hit for a higher average, got on base more, hit for more power, and even stole more bases. The only thing that went down from 2008 was his walk total. It wasn't even a contest between Howard and second-place finisher Florida's Jorge Cantu.

Wow, did Ryan Zimmerman bounce back from an awful 2008 (1,167 swp) to put up a career year. And not just offensively: Zimmerman not only picked up his first Gold Glove in 2009, he also led the majors in Web Gems, as measured on each edition of ESPN's Baseball Tonight. Numbers-wise, he finished well ahead of the Mets' David Wright, who just couldn't seem to find his power stroke in 2009.

Jayson Werth found both his power stroke and his batting eye this year, making for quite an impressive year. Batting behind him is left fielder Raul Ibanez, rounding out a Divisional All-Stars outfield featuring all Philadelphia Phillies. Neither had much competition, with Rookie of the Year Chris Coghlan (FLA) and team-hopper Jeff Francoeur (ATL-NYM) putting up rather pedestrian offensive numbers.

Adam Dunn seemed like a good fit for DH, as he didn't have a natural position for the Nats in 2009. Splitting his time between left field and first base, he narrowly missed his sixth straight 40 homer season while continuing to rack up both the walks and the strikeouts. Rounding out the order is Braves catcher Brian McCann, who put up solid numbers despite having some LASIK surgery-related vision problems early in the year. But armed with a new pair of glasses, McCann quickly returned to form.

Javier Vazquez leads a pitching staff occupied by mostly new faces. Everything was working right for Vazquez this year, who posted a 2.87 ERA (a full 1.32 points below his career average) and struck out an unbelievable 5.41 batters for every walk (second only to Dan Haren in the league). Josh Johnson (all six feet, seven inches of him) becomes the second Marlins prospect to come to fruition in as many years (Ricky Nolasco was last year's candidate, who did finish among the top ten pitchers in the division, despite an ERA over 5). Now if only they could all mature around the same time...

Dutchman Jair Jurrjens was no doubt likely to have an impressive season because he didn't pitch for his country (Netherlands) in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. The 23-year-0ld started the most games in the league, pitched over 200 innings, and still put up an ERA under 3 (2.60, good for third best in the league).

Johan Santana finds himself so low on the list due to an injury-shortened season, but as you can see by his ppg, he still kicked some tail when he was able to take the hill. Rookie left-hander J.A. Happ takes our fifth spot, despite starting in only 23 of his 35 appearances. (Incidentally, two of those starts were shutouts, which led the league.) Two of Happ's rotation-mates made it into the AL East's top ten (Blanton and Hamels), as did Atlanta's Tommy Hanson, who managed a Santana-esque 64.1 ppg, but simply didn't rack up enough points to qualify.

Francisco Rodriguez, who last year saved more games than anyone else had in a single season for the Angels and subsequently signed a big deal with the Mets, closes games for this squad. Despite finishing the most games in the league, K-Rod only managed 35 saves (slightly more than half of last year's record total) simply because his team didn't give him that many leads to protect.

The rest of the bullpen features one representative from each team in the division. Philadelphia's Ryan Madson just barely misses qualification as a closer (see this post for a discussion on what makes a closer). Australian setup man Peter Moylan makes the team by sheer brute force, appearing in over half of his team's games. Kiko Calero (a former Oakland A) and Tyler Clippard (a former Yankee; they called him "The Yankee Clippard" in reference to Joe DiMaggio) each had resurgences with Florida and Washington, respectively. Pedro Feliciano, the lone lefty in the 'pen, rounds out the relief corps.

I decided to include a "swingman" in the staff just for versatility's sake, and Chan Ho Park is the man this year. He didn't do anything special; in fact, some might argue that the concept of including a "swingman" in an All-Star team is flawed - people who think that "swingman" is a euphemism for "spot starter" or "someone who's not good enough to start in the rotation." But I think it's important to have a guy like Park who can average more than one inning per game.

Well, that's everybody. Stay tuned for more Divisonal All-Stars as the week progresses.

Up next: NL Central.