Shohei Ohtani is the world's most special boy.

Is this high on the list of accolades one could receive? Does the Sporting News have any relevance these days? It was pretty big when I still lived in the USA back in the 80's.....

I don't think they've published in years. I think it's online only.

The Adolis Garcia win also implies that they haven't learned about baseball stats in years.

According to BB-Ref, TSN awards an MLB Player of the Year, and then a SP and RP from each league. Did they stop giving the pitching ones this year?

Not that it matters, since I didn't know these awards existed until today. I'm just curious.

Obviously the BBWAA awards (MVP, CYA, etc.) are the big ones. After that, Sporting News might well be the 2nd most prestigious. Granted, I'm not sure who else bothers to give out "official" baseball awards (ESPN?) Now does anybody care? Probably not. I don't recall ever debating MVP vs SN PoY in years they disagree; I don't think I've ever heard of a contract bonus based on a SN award. B-R does have the list of SN winners.

For some reason, the PoY is given for ML as a whole but there are separate league (and now separate starter/reliever) pitcher awards. There are some PoY questionable choices -- Bonds only 3 times, Delgado and Palmeiro have both won it.

I stopped caring about awards when they stopped giving out the Rolaids Relief Man Award.

For those wanting a good laugh - from their Ohtani bit: The comparisons to Babe Ruth should end now — because Ruth never had a season as good as we saw from Ohtani in 2021.

Now, Ohtani's year was amazing, but 9.0 WAR isn't historic - 131 position players have had more than that, 180 pitchers. Ruth did better 10 times as a hitter. He had 2 years to battle Ohtani with as a pitcher/hitter.
1918: pitcher WAR 2.3 hitter WAR 4.7 = 7.0
1919: pitcher WAR 0.8 hitter WAR 9.1 = 9.9

Ohtani: pitcher WAR 4.1 hitter WAR 4.9 = 9.0

So Ohtani was better balanced between pitching and hitting, but not as good overall as Ruth was in 1919. In 9 of his next 12 seasons Ruth would be worth 9.9 or better as a hitter alone. His pitching was pretty much over after 1919 (31 IP over 5 games, 4 starts after that, 78 ERA+).

No denying Ohtani's year was amazing. I doubt we'll ever see a guy worth 4+ WAR as a hitter and a pitcher in the same season again. I suspect Ruth 1918 was the closest we've come otherwise. Negro Leaguers didn't have enough league games to get to 4 WAR in both that I can see.

Rolaids Relief Man Award

Now known as the Rivera & Hoffman awards. For 2005-13, there was also the Delivery Man of the Year ... which seems to have been the same as Rolaids except explicity just for closers. Given the name, I thought it might be for set-up men who deliver the save opportunity to the closer (who then eats it). I assume PH or LC or D's sponsored that one but maybe it was FedEx or DHL or UPS or ...

Apparently from 1973, we've been giving out a DH of the Year award (now the Edgar Martinez Award) ... for no good reason that I'm aware of. I mean we don't really give out a SS of the year award except on defense (which I don't think are official MLB awards anyway). Given Ortiz has been named Edgar of the Year more often than Edgar, I wonder if they'll share the award name honor. When the NL gets the DH, will there be 2 awards? If so, race is on to be the first NL DH good enough to get the award named.

The Adolis Garcia win also implies that they haven't learned about baseball stats in years.

Depending on whether Arozarena still qualifies as a rookie or not, Garcia had 3.8 WAR which is at worst 2nd to Arozarena. Franco is obviously a better player but he played only half a season and playing time has always been a key component of RoY awards. It's not for the most promising player, it's for the best rookie season.

By bWAR, Garcia was an average bat with a great glove (+16 in CF-RF). Statcast agrees he's a top glove (+12). Give or take, he was Tony Armas. That's hardly an embarrassing selection.

Arozarena is credited with 129 service days but "most" of that was 2020 and I don't recall how those things are being handled for RoY purposes. B-R seems to consider him a rookie but possibly TSN did not (don't know about MLB).

Garcia finished the season with more walks (32) than home runs (31)! For a while it looked like he would easily outhomer his walk total, but his power declined in the second half.

John #8,

The player who fits best is Bullet Rogan. In 1922 he was 14-8, 2.83 as a pitcher with 193 innings. 4.6 WAR. As a hitter, .369 with 15 homers in 74 games, 4.5 WAR.

His team played 80 or 85 games ( on bbref, you get two answers depending on if you look at the team record, or the manager’s record). So Rogan did that in about half the hitting games he would have had on an MLB schedule. But his pitching workload looks right in line with modern pitchers, and quite a bit more than Ohtani’s workload.

#12: wow, Bullet Rogan was amazing. 1922: 369/453/660 for a 199 OPS+ in 283 PA (4.5 WAR) at P/CF/RF/LF/3B, 159 ERA+ 14-8 record, 21 starts, 5 relief, 20 complete games, 2 saves 4.6 WAR. Yeah, that was a killer year at age 28. Imagine if MLB was integrated then - he and Ruth would've had a great discussion as to who was the greatest at the time that is for sure. Unlike Ohtani he played for the Kansas City Monarchs who came in 1st place - their RF was Heavy Johnson with a 212 OPS+, LF Hurley McNair 176 OPS+, SS Dobie Moore 178 - the rest of the lineup was sub 100. Another pitcher Willie Gisentaner had a 155 OPS+ but he only played 35 innings in the OF, and 4 at 2B. Different era, different league - big spread in talent from what I can see - a real stars and scrubs league.

This is more or less the players choice award, it's not voted on by the staff of Sporting news, but instead by the players, so not sure it's appropriate to claim that they aren't stat savvy organization.

It would be better if it had more than 184 voters, and without some type of insurance that all teams are represented in the votes equally, it's a bit hard to be sure how accurate this survey actually is.

This is more or less the players choice award

I had no idea, always assumed it was the TSN staff. If it's the players, I'm surprised it comes out as well as it does.

#13
For MLB, Wes Ferrell's 1935 season is probably closest - 8.2 WAR as a pitcher and 2.4 as a batter. Don Newcombe had 2.3 WAR as a batter in 1955 but only 2.9 for pitching.