MLB Awards

November 17, 2009 4:15pm CST

With the Major League Baseball awards starting to trickle out, I thought it would be a nice time to bundle some of the pieces I have written about the awards the past few weeks. Here are the links to those pieces.

The AL MVP Race

The NL MVP Race

The AL Cy Young Race

The NL Cy Young Race

*** I also gave out some Fantasy Awards in a previous piece, so if you're bored you might want to give it a read, as well.

Only one of the above mentioned awards has been announced thus far as Zack Greinke was named, rightly so, the AL Cy Young award winner. While it isn't a shock at all that he pulled in the hardware, the fact that he was named first on 25 of 28 ballots was a bit surprising. Why do I say that? Traditionally the voters have tended to be about, oh, 15 years behind the learning curve in the way that they analyze players, and that means they often pay far too much attention to wins, a category that really has no direct barring on how well, or poorly, a hurler pitched. In fact, Greinke's total of 16 victories is the lowest mark ever for an AL Cy Young winner who was a starting pitcher, the previous low was 18, and it tied the mark of 16 from Brandon Webb's season in 2006 over in the NL.

Here are some facts on Greinke that I didn't list in the piece that you can access above.

(1) Greinke allowed one or zero earned runs in 18 of his 33 starts. That's pretty darn amazing, and though the term has been used so much that it has lost some of its luster, it is clearly apropos in this setting.

(2) His 2.16 ERA was the lowest in the AL since Pedro Martinez posted a 1.74 mark in 2000.

(3) He was the only hurler named on every ballot. Here is how the voting broke down:

Greinke: 134 points, 25-3-0 (first, second, third place votes)
Felix Hernandez: 80 points, 2-23-1
Justin Verlander: 14 points, 1-0-9
CC Sabathia: 13 points, 0-2-7
Roy Halladay: 11 points, 0-0-11

Well, at least they got the top-2 in the voting right.


AL Rookie of the Year

The voting: Andrew Bailey (88 points), Elvis Andrus (65), Rick Porcello (64), Jeff Niemann (21), Gordon Beckham (10) and Brett Anderson (4).

Some people were surprised by the vote, which I personally find a bit odd for the following reason - closers are routinely awarded a place of significance in MVP and Cy Young voting as voters overlook the fact that the average closer is lucky to toss 75 innings. In this case, Bailey was accorded special status by enough voters to win the award, but there is now a growing contingent of people who are asking why he was given the award over the full-time player (Andrus). Show some consistency people! Here are my thoughts on each of the six guys who picked up votes.

Bailey - The 8th Athletic to win the award to the tie Yankees for the AL lead, Bailey was the A's third winner in six years (Bobby Crosby in 2004, Huston Street in 2005). Bailey's total of 26 saves was 24 more than any other AL rookie, and his 1.84 ERA was best amongst AL first year hurlers. Batters only hit .167 off Bailey as he permitted a mere 47 hits in 83.1 innings while he posted an impressive 9.83 K/9 mark. Tough to argue that he wasn't deserving of the award with numbers like that.

Andrus - Appeared in 145 games at shortstop hitting .267 with 40 RBI, 72 runs and 33 steals. The speed is certainly legit, there is more room to grow there, and in fact his hitting actually improved after the All-Star break (.280 with a .342 OBP). You have to give him credit because he played short but he made 22 errors, second most at the position, or one more than the combined total of Jimmy Rollins (six), Alex Gonzalez (seven) and Derek Jeter (eight). He was the best everyday rookie player in the league, but he just didn't excel like Bailey did.

Porcello - When a rookie makes 31 starts, wins 14 games, and posted a 3.96 ERA, that guy has a bright future. When he does all of that while at the same time being only 21 years old, that future is exceedingly bright. Porcello also offered better numbers as the season wore on (3.07 ERA, 1.15 WHIP over his last 13 starts), despite the fact that the Tigers were very cautious with his innings pitched total (170.2).

Niemann - His numbers were actually pretty darn identical to Porcello's.

Niemann: 13-6, 3.94 ERA, 125 Ks, 1.35 WHIP in 180.2 IP
Porcello: 14-9, 3.96 ERA, 89 Ks, 1.34 WHIP in 1702. IP

So why did Porcello triple the vote total of Niemann? Perhaps I gave the voters too much credit when I discussed how well they did with the Greinke vote.

Beckham - Only saw action in 102 games. Though he hit.270, Beckham surprised with 14 homers and he walked enough to get on base at a .347 clip. Beckham also played out of position the whole time at third, and though he made 14 errors with a .952 fielding percentage, you have to cut the guy some slack since he was playing out of position. Gordon also posted a .833 OPS with 43 RBI over his final 69 games.

Anderson - Five years from now this might be the Athletic we are still talking about, not Bailey. Anderson went 11-11 with a 4.06 ERA and a solid 1.28 WHIP over 30 starts, an those numbers pale compared to how he did after the All-Star break: 3.48 ERA, 1.19 WHIP and 86 Ks in 88 innigns pitched. He certainly has the look of a keeper.


NL Rookie of the Year

The voting: Chris Coghlan (105), J.A. Happ (94), Tommy Hanson (37), Andrew McCutchen (25), Casey McGehee (18), Randy Wells (3), Garrett Jones (2), Everth Cabrera (1), Dexter Fowler (1), Gerardo Parra (1) and Colby Rasmus (1).

There seems to be some low rumble that this wasn't the best decision, but I have a hard time understanding why. Considering that Coghlan led NL rookies in average (.321), runs (84), hits (162), total bases (232) and OBP (.390), what is the problems? He also batted .372 over his final 72 games as he got on base at a .423 clip. He did all of this playing out of position in the outfield (he is a second baseman). That's one hell of a season for any player, let alone a rookie.

Some felt that Happ should have won the award, and this was reflected in the fact that he was the only player in the Senior Circuit who was named on all 32 ballots. Happ had a great ERA (2.93), though one that was artificially low (i.e. he was exceedingly lucky with a left on base rate over 85 percent). The truth is that Happ didn't pitch any better than Randy Wells or Tommy Hanson, guys he clearly distanced himself from in the voting.

Happ: 12-4, 2.93 ERA, 6.45 K/9, 2.13 K/BB, 1.23 WHIP in 166 IP
Hanson: 11-4, 2.89 ERA, 8.18 K/9, 2.52 K/BB, 1.18 WHIP in 127.2 IP
Wells: 12-10, 3.05 ERA, 5.66 K/9, 2.26 K/BB, 1.28 WHIP in 165.1 IP

Hanson would have made this discussion a moot point if the Braves hadn't taken such a measured approach, but that's not how it turned out.

In the end I think the right man won the rookie award in both leagues, and with the naming of Zack Greinke as the AL Cy Young winner the voters are 3-for-3 so far. Can they keep up that perfect record over the course of the rest of the voting?