2009 SB Nation Baseball Awards: Rookie Of The Year

by Eric Simon on Nov 10, 2009 2:00 PM EST

(Note: the following preamble is 99% unchanged from the previously announced awards, so feel free to skip it if you've already read it.)

One of the nice things about having a whole network of baseball sites is that occasionally we get to pretend we're real writers and collaborate on projects with one another. Now that the baseball season is over, and before everyone's focus turns to the free agent and trade markets, we look to award the heroes of the this past year. And by "heroes" I mean "multi-millionaire baseball players". The BBWAA awards won't be announced until next week -- and at this point most of their opinions brush dangerously close to utter irrelevancy -- so SB Nation gets the jump on them by announcing the winners of our awards voting this week. As much as anything, it's an effort to see if our cadre of basement-dwellers can do a better job than the professionals at getting the awards correct.

We have already revealed the Manager of the Year award. Today we present the results for Rookie of the Year, an award which no Met has won since Dwight Gooden in 1984.

National League SBN bloggers could only vote for the NL awards; American League bloggers were similarly restricted to voting for their own league's awards. Here are the results of the National League Rookie of the Year voting. American League results can be found after the jump.

Rk	Player	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Tommy Hanson	Atlanta Braves	9	9	6	78
2	J.A. Happ	Philadelphia Phillies	6	9	7	64
3	Andrew McCutchen	Pittsburgh Pirates	8	3	5	54
4	Chris Coghlan	Florida Marlins	7	5	4	54
5	Dexter Fowler	Colorado Rockies	-	3	1	10
6	Randy Wells	Chicago Cubs	-	-	6	6
7	Garrett Jones	Pittsburgh Pirates	1	-	-	5
8	Casey McGehee	Milwaukee Brewers	-	1	2	5
9	Seth Smith	Colorado Rockies	-	1	-	3

American League voting results.

Rk	Player	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Elvis Andrus	Texas Rangers	6	9	6	63
2	Andrew Bailey	Oakland Athletics	11	1	3	61
3	Jeff Niemann	Tampa Bay Rays	3	5	3	33
4	Rick Porcello	Detroit Tigers	2	7	2	33
5	Brett Anderson	Oakland Athletics	5	1	3	31
6	Gordon Beckham	Chicago White Sox	1	2	8	19
7	Nolan Reimold	Baltimore Orioles	1	-	1	6
8	Matt Wieters	Baltimore Orioles	-	1	3	6
9	Brad Bergesen	Baltimore Orioles	-	1	-	3
10	Ricky Romero	Toronto Blue Jays	-	1	-	3
11	Travis Snider	Toronto Blue Jays	-	1	-	3

Tweet Comment 38 comments | 0 recs |

Do you like this story?

Comments

Robbery!

I’m pretty sure I voted McCutchen-Hanson-Wells

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 2:20 PM EST reply actions

gah, JA Happ.

what a joke.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Nov 10, 2009 2:24 PM EST reply actions

eh

he’s gonna regress next year, but he did have a good rookie year. Don’t get too caught up in looking at the predictors when judging the results

"[The Giants] beat us down. We were beat by a grown-man team, a team we want to be like one day. They came in here and took it to us. Out-manned us, out-gunned us. ... It wasn't even close." - Raheem Morris, 9/27/09

by cjmulrain on Nov 10, 2009 2:47 PM EST up reply actions

peripherals aren't predictors

they’re reflections of performance. If “results” are team based stats, what’s the point of looking at them at all?

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 3:07 PM EST up reply actions

They're called peripherals for a reason though

they do a better job of predicting the future than do past results, but past results are what happened on the field. I know we like to talk about baseball being a glorified individual sport, but the fact is that it is a team game, the results are team based. When handing out awards, I think the results are more important than the underlying reasons behind the results – maybe JA Happ wouldn’t have done as well with the Mets b/c their defense sucked, but then he didn’t play for the Mets and shouldn’t really be penalized for that, IMO.

by cjmulrain on Nov 10, 2009 9:12 PM EST up reply actions

Yea it's a team game, but it's an individual award

You could just as easily say the results are what happened as a result of his pitches, what you call the process. Besides, Happ’s ERA is more a product of an unsustainably high LOB% than his defense. Do you penalize the other rookies for not being extremely lucky?

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 9:49 PM EST up reply actions

yes

luck is a humongous part of baseball.

by cjmulrain on Nov 10, 2009 10:09 PM EST up reply actions

also...key word: unsustainably

I’m not arguing he’s gonna be good next year. I’m arguing he was good this year. His high LOB% means there were a lot of guys that didn’t score against him. That is why he had a good season and not a crappy one. And that’s why he’s more deserving of an award than someone who had an unsustainably low LOB%

by cjmulrain on Nov 10, 2009 10:10 PM EST up reply actions

but he wasn't good this year...

he got good results despite not being good.

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 10:38 PM EST up reply actions

How about

for MVP, if you’re one of those who emphasizes the “V”? If there are two players and one has slightly better numbers but a clearly unsustainable BABIP, and the other has hit a lot of line drives that turned into outs, the former has still been more valuable.

by Mount17 on Nov 10, 2009 11:06 PM EST up reply actions

Yea but it's never that close

If this was Wells v. Happ for the top spot, that’d be a consideration, but in this group, Happ is way too high.

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 11:24 PM EST up reply actions

so what?

awards are meant to reward good results. It’s not the “rookie who would have been the most valuable if he was luckier” award. It’s the Rookie of the Year Award.

And you say he “wasn’t good,” but his results disagree with you. He probably won’t be good next year, but he was good this year.

If a guy hits 50 homers but has the flukiest, highest HR/FB ratio in MLB history (let’s say 85%), does that really matter? The guy still hit 50 homers and helped his team out a ton. To stretch the analogy, lets say every time he hit a homer, the bases were juiced – yea, it’s contextual and he was obviously the most ridiculously lucky person in the history of history, but he was still incredibly valuable.

by cjmulrain on Nov 10, 2009 11:25 PM EST up reply actions

I'm on board with this

If a guy hits .400/.500/.600 one year but his BABIP is like .650 I’m not gonna penalize him in the voting for being lucky. In predicting his future performance it would be imperative to consider luck but voting on awards is a different story. That .400/.500/.600 line actually happened, regardless of other peripherals. In this case Happ clearly benefited from luck (.270 BABIP and 85.2% LOB%) and his ERA should regress like Kyle Kendrick’s did a couple years back but the fact remains his runs allowed was impressive.

by James Kannengieser on Nov 10, 2009 11:35 PM EST up reply actions

Neither of you guys' analogies are at all apt to Happ's situation

HR/FB% regresses to a batters’ unique skill level. If a batter uncharacteristically hits 50 HRs in a season its likely because his true talent has changed. While your example of 85% HR/FB is virtually impossible (which doesn’t make your analogy any more tenable), this players’ new career HR/FB% after the season would be a better reflection of his talent and a better predictor of future performance than his previous rate. There is a small level of luck involved with homeruns, but a a homerun is an extremely difficult individual feat. By contrast, LOB% regresses to ~75% for all pitchers, period. With very few exceptions LOB% does not indicate a talent of the pitcher, but pure luck. HR is a raw counting statistic that measures an outcome that is almost entirely dependent on the individual batter. ERA is a rate statistic that is just inherently flawed, and doesn’t reflect the individual pitchers performance, but the teams performance with the pitcher on the mound. Why measure his performance with a crappy highly variable rate statistic, when we have better indicators of individual performance? FIP and tRA are not a “predictive” stats, they reflect the outcomes of the pitchers performance, including HR/FB, which varies largely from year to year.

Same goes for James’ analogy with BABIP. Batter BABIP regresses to the batters true skill level, not a league average. Batting .400 with a .650 BABIP is just an expression of incredible skill, albeit maybe with a little luck. By contrast, pitcher BABIP regresses to .330 for all pitchers, varying slightly for the quality of the pitcher’s team fielding.

by Sam Page on Nov 11, 2009 12:18 AM EST up reply actions

i think we can all agree

that the BABIPAHAPP is too damned low. fun to say.

by Pack Bringley on Nov 11, 2009 8:14 AM EST up reply actions

wow

Bailey got the Pedro Martinez ’99 MVP treatment.

Also, it goes to show how little I followed baseball this year, I haven’t heard of half these guys.

by cjmulrain on Nov 10, 2009 2:47 PM EST reply actions

Hey, where is Omir?

"We're investigating the investigative procedure of the investigation of Tony Bernazard"---Omar Minaya (he really didn't say it but he would"

by firejerrynow on Nov 10, 2009 3:32 PM EST reply actions

I can agree 100% with Hanson. The Braves starting rotation scares the hell out of me.

"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"

by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Nov 10, 2009 3:44 PM EST reply actions

McCutchen???

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 5:20 PM EST up reply actions

If they traded Mclouth

earlier I bet he could have one it, but Hanson had a sick year.

by Delgado on Nov 10, 2009 6:21 PM EST up reply actions

*won

by Delgado on Nov 10, 2009 6:21 PM EST up reply actions

How in the world does Jones only get one vote???

My top 3 are Coghlan then Jones then Happ for the NL.

by Bobby Baseball on Nov 10, 2009 5:58 PM EST reply actions

He only played half of the season.

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 9:05 PM EST up reply actions

My question is how he got a first place vote.

by Joamiq on Nov 11, 2009 4:19 AM EST up reply actions

I have no problem with these

other than Happ being too high.

by dtro on Nov 10, 2009 6:22 PM EST reply actions

Is it bad

that I don’t know who the majority of these people are? Especially in the AL, only ones I know are Porcello & Weiters. Gah.

by Jsz on Nov 10, 2009 6:51 PM EST reply actions

The AL voting was the worst

Brett Anderson is a league leader in FIP who makes 30 starts and places behind Rick Porcello who sucks.

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 9:06 PM EST up reply actions

sucks is kinda harsh.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Nov 10, 2009 9:12 PM EST up reply actions

5.59 tRA

rivals the worst performances of the Mets pitchers.

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 9:51 PM EST up reply actions

He's not great, and he's overrated by most measures.

But I’d still argue against sucks. He’s still quite young, and he’s already productive at the major league level. I guess my perception of him’s a big biased, though. Maybe it’s just because I know his family, had friends who went to school with him.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Nov 10, 2009 10:26 PM EST up reply actions

he's 20 years old

and had a 4.77 FIP. He’s pitching about league average when he probably should be in AA.

"We're investigating the investigative procedure of the investigation of Tony Bernazard"---Omar Minaya (he really didn't say it but he would"

by firejerrynow on Nov 11, 2009 6:35 AM EST up reply actions

ahh comment fail

he doesn’t suck, he just not 3.96 ERA good

"We're investigating the investigative procedure of the investigation of Tony Bernazard"---Omar Minaya (he really didn't say it but he would"

by firejerrynow on Nov 11, 2009 6:36 AM EST up reply actions

Bailey got robbed in the AL, much like he probably will when the actual awards come out.

What you fail to understand in your joyless myopia is that baseball is the key to life-- the Rosetta Stone, if you will. If you just understood baseball better all your other questions your, your... the, uh... the aliens, the conspiracies they would all, in their way be answered by the baseball gods.

by winchester5 on Nov 10, 2009 10:44 PM EST reply actions

How can A's fans not think Anderson is the ROY?

by Sam Page on Nov 10, 2009 11:24 PM EST up reply actions

SAVEZ

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Nov 10, 2009 11:28 PM EST up reply actions

I do think Anderson deserves it 100%, but because of the fact that he was on a horrible team and had a mediocre record he will never get it.

Bailey has the flashy stats that the voters love, so he actually has a shot, despite being on the same bad team as Anderson. i think thats why most A’s fans are pushing for Bailey.

by winchester5 on Nov 11, 2009 3:59 PM EST up reply actions

Agreed

by Joamiq on Nov 11, 2009 4:19 AM EST up reply actions

Well

The actual voters at least turned out to be from the same planet as SB’s panel for this award – the top three picked were in SB’s top four for both leagues.

by deadspy3 on Nov 16, 2009 5:19 PM EST reply actions