Who won the 2008 Willie Mays Hayes award?

Most, if not all, have seen the movie Major League. Remember the batting cage scene with manager Lou Brown and Willie Mays Hayes?

Lou Brown: Well, You run like Hays, but you hit like shit. With your speed, you’re suppoed to lay one down and beat it out. Everytime I see you pop one up, you owe me 20 push-ups.

Willie Mays Hayes: No problem.
[pops a ball up]

Willie Mays Hayes: Shit.
[does push-ups]

Judging Rule:

With a slight variation we’ve taken players with less than 8 HR and more than 20 steals and ranked them by flyball percentage.

Judging Leeway:

I’ve kicked off players that had low HR numbers due to time missed (for example Carl Crawford usually hits 10+ HR in a season).

I’ve also thrown out players that excel at SB but aren’t really considered fast runners.

Finalists:

Cesar Izturis: 1 HR & 31.2% of batted balls are flyballs

Jason Bartlett: 1 HR & 30.3% flyballs

Willy Taveras: 1 HR & 28.4% flyballs

The 2008 Willie Mays Hayes Award Winner

In keeping with the Hayes tradition, 13.7% of Gomez’s flyballs were infield popups.