Now that baseball season is almost over, it's time to completely forget about baseball and focus on awards season! My original idea for tonight's Dugout was the AL Cy Young Award 2008 Chatroom, but that ended up being Cliff Lee bouncing a rubber ball against a wall for 35 panels, so here is that Dugout's hotly-contested National League equivalent. On second thought, they should just give that to Cliff Lee too.

Tonight's Dugout, with all the speculation and obsessive statistical analysis you come to the Internet for, is after the jump.

One of the longest running complaints about the Dugout is that we don't cover your favorite team (assuming that your favorite team isn't the Yankees, the Red Sox, or whoever Farnsworth plays for). This happens a lot with the Pirates and the Mariners. It occasionally happens with the Giants, and it almost always comes with these two talking points:

1) You never say anything nice about the Giants
2) Barry Bonds is not the only person who plays for the Giants

These are both true. To remedy that, tonight's Dugout deals with the oncoming managing general partnership of William "Bill" Neukom, president of the American Bar Association from 2007 to 2008 and president of the American Honky Tonk Bar Association from 1993-present. It says a lot of nice things about the Giants and has nothing to do with Barry Bonds.

Tonight's Dugout is after the jump (haven't you learned this by now).

Henry Schulman reports that Giants' General Manager Brian Sabean is probably safe for next year:

William Neukom will have many important items on his agenda when he becomes the Giants' managing general partner Oct. 1, but it appears his to-do list will not include a general manager search. Numerous team insiders say they expect Neukom to retain Brian Sabean for the final year of his contract.

They stressed that no decisions have been finalized ahead of Neukom's official ascension to the No. 1 chair, but he is leaning strongly toward retaining Sabean for a 13th season as general manager.

There are about 18 different brands of spin in article about why this is a good idea. None of them seem to hold water for me, but that's probably not important as it is Giants' fans and not grumpy bloggers who will make the final determination of whether keeping Sabean is a good idea.

Here's one that is particularly troubling, though:

The Giants' downfall after eight straight winning seasons stemmed from an overplayed strategy of building around Barry Bonds. Those above Sabean in the front office were culpable, too, so the blame cannot fall entirely on the GM even if he made some poor choices along the way.

This is rather incredible to me.

Okay, so I don't know if Bruce Bochy would actually kill him, but it looks as though he may be willing to possibly kill the kid's career. On Saturday night, Tim Lincecum threw his first complete game shutout of the season as the San Francisco Giants beat the Padres 7-0. He also threw 138 pitches in the process.

Now, on the surface, there doesn't seem to be any reason for a manager to leave his ace in a blowout and allow him to throw so many pitches, especially when you consider that both teams are well out of the playoff hunt. So why did Bochy do it? Well, he wanted to help the kid in the NL Cy Young race.

"It was big for him to pitch a shutout," Bochy said. "I don't want him to talk about, 'I haven't finished a game.' I don't want that on his resume when they're talking about the Cy Young voting, and I don't want him to think, 'If I finished a game or two, that would have made a difference.' "

On one hand, I can appreciate Bochy doing everything in his power to help one of his players win an award. It's the kind of thing that earns a lot of love and respect in the clubhouse. On the other hand, I think Bochy must be out of his mind.

Why risk injuring the kid just to help him get a few votes for an award that really doesn't mean anything? And does Bruce really think some voter will think to himself, "Man, I wasn't going to vote for Lincecum before, but now that he's shutout the Padres I have no choice!" Imagine what would have happened if on pitch #138 Tim had felt a pop in his elbow.

As frustrating as award season can be in Major League Baseball, the most maddening portion for me is -- bar none -- having to hear about a pitcher's won/loss record as the main indicator of a Cy Young candidate. The inclusion among many other factors is reasonable, because the pitcher's job on any given night is to give his team a chance to win.

It's pure laziness and insanity to glance just at the record of each pitcher, though, when deciding who deserves the Cy Young. Consider a pair of different outings to illustrate how accurate a measure wins and losses are when relating to pitching performance:

May 28th: Livan Hernandez went six innings. He gave up 13 hits and eight runs, six of which were earned. He did strike out a whopping two hitters. He also received enormous run support and came away with the win.

July 21st: Rich Harden went seven innings, and yielded only a hit. The problem was, it was a solo home run (landing in the first row). He also struck out ten. His team gave him zero runs in support and he took the 1-0 loss.

Based upon the archaic W/L criteria some Cy Young voters use, Livan Hernandez was the better pitcher of those two examples.

From The Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

While discussing the Cy Young on Sunday night, Joe Morgan said, predictably, that it was "Brandon Webb's to lose". In fairness, he's probably right. But ... I don't really think he should be. See, the Cy Young is all about perception.

Headshots via Getty Images
Well, not all about perception, but there's a pretty hefty chunk of voting attribution distributed towards the feeling of performance, rather than the strictly statistical discussion of how various pitchers have excelled throughout the season.

If that wasn't the case, then Randy Johnson would have won the Cy Young in 2004, when he very clearly outperformed Roger Clemens on the mound.

In an "ideal" world, there would be someone stuck squarely in the upper left quadrant above -- a pitcher with obviously dominant stats that were publicly recognized (because his team didn't stink). That rarely happens, though, and this year's Cy Young race is, when you really start breaking it down, one of the most intriguing we've seen in a few years.

After all, we have the heavy favorite in Webb, the best pitcher in the National League in Tim Lincecum, the discussion incumbent (Johan Santana), the early season surprise (Edinson Volquez) and a few darkhorses in Danny Haren and Ryan Dempster, the latter which is nothing short of shocking.

See, it's perception that led smart baseball guru types Bill James and Rob Neyer to create a formula entirely devoted to predicting the Cy Young balloting. Not "should win" mind you, but "will win" based entirely on what the voters tend to look for in their winner.

As you can see from the list, Salomon Torres is the eighth most likely pitcher to win the CY. I'm willing to bet he won't get any votes come the end of the year. But a guy who deserves some votes, or at least some Award-worthy buzz, for what he's done since the beginning of July, is CC Sabathia.

Are you on the MLB FanHouse page right now? Okay, look one story down. I'll wait, because writing works in real time.

If you are too lazy to move your hand or finger and scroll down to read (and God knows I've been running websites long enough to know how that works), Omar Vizquel could end up in Japan next season if nobody picks him up. Personally I think the Indians should pick him up for two reasons: one, to give him a bit of a "farewell tour" in the city he helped out for so long, and two, to move Jhonny Peralta out of short, because the guy can rake but he's got the playmaking ability of newborn calf.

Tonight's late night Dugout, which is nowhere near as hilarious as Tom Nieto working for Radio Shack, is after the jump.

Ah, Japan baseball. The refuge for the old, the infirmed and the Mr. 3000's of the world. (RIP, Bernie.) And now, it could be the home of Omar Vizquel, should no American team decide to retain his services next year.

"If I cannot find something satisfying here, there is a possibility I might end up in Japan playing ball," Vizquel said Friday. He would not be the first Venezuelan gaijin in the Japan Leagues, but he would be the most famous.

"I've played here long enough in America," Vizquel. "I've seen every team, every ballpark. I think it would be great to experience a new league and something new. I played in Japan in 2000 on the major-league all-star tour and I found it very cool - good baseball, good fans. Why not? It's a new culture."

I back this move, although I don't know how much I believe him when he states that it's because he's "seen everything".

Sure, that's a nice way of saying that he knows he won't get re-signed and it's entirely possible that the Giants will choose to discard him as they attempt to move their average offensive age below 48, but the reality is that going to Japan to play is not something he's choosing to do actively. Of course, he still has plenty of glove left, even if his offense is lacking, so it's hard to see him not contributing overseas.

Diesels and Sevens were the hot ticket metrosexual jeans for dudes when I was in school. I have no clue if they're still hip or if metrosexual is even kosher to say; my jeans are Wrangler. And I swear allegiance to all things Favre.

I don't care for $250 blue jeans and I certainly won't pay for them. But some people will, I suppose, otherwise Barry Zito wouldn't be modeling for True Religion, a designer brand of jeans for dudes. (Gracias to 'Duk for reminding me that I heard this on television the other night.)

The Zito ads will appear on the sides of buses in Japan. In San Francisco, a True Religion billboard is planned for a building near the intersection of Bush Street and Van Ness Avenue.

"It's crazy,'' Zito said. "I got a text message from (former A's teammate) Eric Byrnes that said, 'Dude, my wife just saw you on a billboard in Vegas. You've got to be (kidding) me!' "

Zito did not seek out this second career. He told his publicist, Kathy Jacobson, to refuse any endorsement offers - especially when he had an 0-8 record after nine starts.

"I can't be the `Seiko guy,' none of that," Zito said. "That just looks bad, like I'm not focusing on baseball. But Kathy said, `No, it's not an endorsement. It's not because of who you are or that you play baseball. This is a modeling gig.' "

Wow. What a humble guy. $126 mil is enough; 0-8 doesn't deserve any more money or endorsements. Gosh. Zen, like, really.

I do kind of respect, though, his willingness to take on a second career, even if said career is male modeling. It's pretty similar to what I've got going on right now, what with the office job that pays big bucks and the blogging on the side. Less glamorous, maybe, but similar nonetheless.