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Thursday, October 28, 2021
Player of the Year: Shohei Ohtani, LAA
NL Rookie of the Year: Jonathan India, CIN
AL Rookie of the Year: Adolis Garcia, TEX
NL Comeback Player of the Year: Buster Posey, SFG
AL Comeback Player of the Year: Trey Mancini, BAL
NL Manager of the Year: Gabe Kapler, SFG
AL Manager of the Year: Kevin Cash, TBR
Executive of the Year: Farhan Zaidi, SFG
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1. Hombre BrotaniNot that it matters, since I didn't know these awards existed until today. I'm just curious.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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