ROY Award
In about 10 minutes, the BBWAA is going to announce the winners of the AL and NL Rookie of the Year awards. Odds are pretty good the AL trophy will end up going to Ivan Nova, Jeremy Hellickson, or Mark Trumbo, while Dustin Ackley and Michael Pineda will get a token vote here or there.
Personally, I just don’t care. The results of the voting don’t matter to me at all. Ackley and Pineda were both better than whoever ends up getting the trophy, but it’s not like they were A-Rod in 1996 and the lack of recognition is going to go down as an historic screw job or anything. Pineda was excellent during the first half of the year and Ackley was excellent during the second half, but neither of them put together the kind of season that essentially demands that they be handed hardware at the end of it.
They had really good years. Other guys had less good years but are going to get rewarded because of antiquated measurements of performance. If that bothers you, you can make a pretty good case that either of them deserved to win it and have a pretty solid case on your side. Me? I just can’t get very worked up over it. Ackley and Pineda were really good – we know that, the world knows that, and whether the BBWAA voting reflects that or not, it doesn’t really change anything.
As expected, Pineda and Ackley finish a distant fifth and sixth respectively. Hellickson wins the award, Trumbo is second, Hosmer is third, and Nova is fourth. Ackley actually did get one first place vote. And now, on to things that matter.
Got an amen for that.
The only thing I really cared about is that Mark Trumbo not win, and he didn’t; so I’m good with it.
Still think Griffey deserved that MVP more than Arod anyway. He got jobbed.
Personally, I would have given it to Lawrie.
The building-a-roster-for-the-future part of me applauds the Writer’s choices… Ackley or Pineda would be however much more expensive to re-sign down the road if they got to hang that meaningless award in their locker.
The sunny side is that they BOTH got votes… We had two of the top 6 rookies in the AL last year. Nice job, guys.
But let’s start a new mantra for the future M’s:
“We want Wins, not Awards!”
(Could be useful someday, maybe? Hopefully? Please?!? I bet Felix would have traded his Cy Young for some more wins the past few years…)
Not a single vote for Larry Bernandez???
Well, we have the second half of that down to a science now. Shut out of the Golden Glove awards for the first time in decades. etc, etc.
I want good players not award winners.
I would rather have Pineda and Ackley than Hellickson.
Mark Trumbo’s 29 rookie home runs was impressive.
But I would not swap Justin Smoak for him straight up.
Just because dumb writers voted for other players doesn’t mean that Ackley and Pineda are somehow suddenly worse than those players. I would argue that the Mariners had 2 of the top 3 rookies in the AL (the other being Brett Lawrie).
The service time limiting maneuver that every team uses has money-wrenched the ROY selection. Keeping top prospects in the minors until June, as Seattle did with Ackley, means we have shorter seasons for some of the best rookies.
Wish there was a good solution.