Defensive Player of the Year

The Defensive Player Award was one of the closest votes this year with four different players recieving votes. Those four players were Evan Dawley, Steve Girodat, Jason Rider and Jon VanSon. All were excellent this year defensively and contributed to the Cubs success this year.

Dawley has been steller for the Cubs behind the plate for a number of years and consistantly recieves votes for this award despite not having won it yet. Dawley is always a brick wall behind the plate and is great at blocking those arrant pitches.

Girodat has been the wondering fielder for the Cubs during his career. He started out as mainly a utility players seeing most of his time at third and outfield. Then in 2006 he became the Cubs regular centerfielder. In 2007 he moved over to left mainly, while seeing some time at second base as well. His play in 2007 earned him the Defensive Player of the Year award. Then this year he became the Cubs fulltime second basemen and played as if he had played his entire career there.

Rider was again the teams centerfielder after taking over fulltime in center in 2007. Rider is one of the fastest players in the league and has one of the strongest arms of any outfielder in the league. With the move to SCS with smaller outfields and wood bats Rider was able to play very shallow and was able to catch a lot of bloopers that would have been hits. Rider also threw out a number of runners trying to score this year. Despite not being a fulltime starter in 2006 until part way through the season Rider won the Defensive Player of the Year award that year playing in left and centerfield.

The last candidate for this award was Jon VanSon. VanSon was the team's shortstop again and was very reliable and consistant in 2008. He made a number of outstanding plays this year to help the Cubs pitching staff.

So without any more writing the winner of the 2008 Defensive Player of the Year award is Jason Rider. As stated above Rider also won the award in 2006 and ties Derek Elsner for the most Defensive Player of the Year awards with two. Other past winners include: Paul McGlaun, Jim Vick, Josh Patton, Chris Baroli, Dave Brumagin and Steve Girodat.