BBA votes Hamilton, Votto for Stan Musial Award!

As the second season of the Basbeall Bloggers Alliance end of season awards comes to a close, we arrive at the MVP award of the organization, the Stan Musial Award. What follows is an official press release awarding the winners and detailing the voting. I’ll have some thoughts on the voting afterwards as well.

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HAMILTON, VOTTO TAKE HOME STAN MUSIAL AWARD
The Baseball Bloggers Alliance concluded their award season today by naming the best player in each league for 2010.  When all the votes were tallied, two men were comfortably ahead.

Texas outfielder Josh Hamilton, who hit 32 home runs and fashioned an OPS of 1.044 while leading the Rangers into the playoffs, won the award in the American League.  Hamilton received sixteen first place votes and 261 points overall, which put him ahead of his nearest competitor, Detroit first baseman Miguel Cabrera, by roughly 70 points.

In the National League, helping Cincinnati to an unexpected divisional title paid off for first baseman Joey Votto.  After a season where he cracked 37 home runs and posted a 1.024 OPS, Votto also received sixteen first-place votes toward his total of 252 points.  He also denied St. Louis first baseman Albert Pujols the chance to win back-to-back BBA awards.  Pujols was selected as MVP by the BBA in 2009, but placed second with 197 points in this year’s voting.

Winners of other Alliance awards also received votes in the Musial balloting.  In the American League, Walter Johnson winner Felix Hernandez received 21 points, while Goose Gossage selection Rafael Soriano had a single mention.  On the senior circuit, Walter Johnson winner Roy Halladay placed fourth in the voting with 101 points.

The complete voting results are as follows (first place votes in parenthesis):

American League
Josh Hamilton, Texas (16) 261
Miguel Cabrera, Detroit (4) 188
Robinson Cano, New York 158
Jose Bautista, Toronto (1) 146
Adrian Beltre, Boston 107
Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay (1) 102
Paul Konerko, Chicago 65
Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay 56
Joe Mauer, Minnesota 50
Shin-Soo Choo, Cleveland 44
Felix Hernandez, Seattle 21
Vladimir Guerrero, Texas 13
Justin Morneau, Minnesota 12
Delmon Young, Minnesota 10
Cliff Lee, Seattle/Texas 8
CC Sabathia, New York 8
Alex Rodriguez, New York 7
Clay Buchholz, Boston 4
Mark Teixeria, New York 3
Jon Lester, Boston 2
Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle 2
Nick Swisher, New York 2
Jim Thome, Minnesota 2
Kevin Youkilis, Boston 2
Brett Gardner, New York 1
David Ortiz, Boston 1
Rafael Soriano, Tampa Bay 1

National League
Joey Votto, Cincinnati (16) 252
Albert Pujols, St. Louis (3) 197
Carlos Gonzalez, Colorado (1) 118
Roy Halladay, Philadelphia (1) 101
Adrian Gonzalez, San Diego 98
Troy Tulowitski, Colorado 98
Ryan Zimmerman, Washington 93
Matt Holliday, St. Louis 84
Aubrey Huff, San Francisco 32
Adam Wainwright, St. Louis 17
Ubaldo Jimenez, Colorado 16
Josh Johnson, Florida 16
Dan Uggla, Florida 16
Jayson Werth, Philadelphia 16
Ryan Braun, Milwaukee 13
Prince Fielder, Milwaukee 10
Ryan Howard, Philadelphia 9
Martin Prado, Atlanta 7
Jason Heyward, Atlanta 6
Rickie Weeks, Milwaukee 5
David Wright, New York 5
Adam Dunn, Washington 4
Kelly Johnson, Arizona 4
Andres Torres, San Francisco 1

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of this writing, the organization consists of 233 blogs spanning all 30 major league squads as well as general baseball writing.

The BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into “chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted. The blog chapters that are focused on general baseball were allowed two votes as well, which they could use both on the same league or split between the two leagues.

Chapters generally followed one of two methods when casting their ballot.  Either representatives of the chapter were given the ballots for voting or a “group ballot” was posted, accounting for both of their votes.

Ballots are posted on the respective blogs and for this award, were tabulated on a 13-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 point scale for first through tenth place. In the interest of transparency, links are given below for the ballots. Chapter affiliation is in parenthesis.  Those chapters that decided on the group method are noted with an asterisk.

American League
Camden Crazies (Baltimore)*
The Bottom Line (Boston)*
The Tribe Daily (Cleveland)*
Motor City Bengals (Detroit)
Switch Hitting Pitchers (Detroit)
One Royal Way (Kansas City)*
Twinkie Talk (Minnesota)
Seth Speaks (Minnesota)
Bronx Baseball Daily (New York)*
Contract Year (Oakland)
Rise of the Rays (Tampa Bay)
Infield Fly (Toronto)
The Blue Jay Hunter (Toronto)
Advanced Fantasy Baseball (Fantasy)*
Victoria Seals Baseball Blog (Other)*
Misc. Baseball (History)*
Blogging From The Bleachers (General)*

National League
Blog Red Machine (Cincinnati)
Marlin Maniac (Florida)
Marlins Diehards (Florida)
Feeling Dodger Blue (Los Angeles)
The Eddie Kranepool Society (New York)*
Dugger’s Corner (Philadelphia)
Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke? (Pittsburgh)*
The Outfield Ivy (St. Louis)
Pitchers Hit Eighth (St. Louis)
Friar Forecast (San Diego)*
22gigantes (San Francisco)*
Advanced Fantasy Baseball (Fantasy)*
Victoria Seals Baseball Blog (Other)*
Misc. Baseball (History)*
Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf (Miscellaneous)*
Blogging From The Bleachers (General)*

Prior Winners:  2009: Joe Mauer, Minnesota; Albert Pujols, St. Louis

The official website of the BBA is located at www.baseballbloggersalliance.com.  The BBA can be found on Twitter by the handle @baseballblogs and by the hashmark #bbba.  Members of the BBA may be heard at Blog Talk Radio every Tuesday night with their call-in show, BBA Baseball Talk, which may also be downloaded as a podcast from iTunes.  For more information, contact Daniel Shoptaw at founder@baseballbloggersalliance.com.

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I thought there were a few interesting results from the voting. One thing that intrigued me right away was that Roy Halladay received proper support for the award. Seeing him alongside Carlos Gonzalez seems fair, and I’d argue that he actually deserved to be up with Joey Votto and Albert Pujols in the voting as well. Still, this award has always been primarily about position players, since pitchers get their own separate award, so it isn’t surprising that Halladay did not receive similar billing as the top MVP candidates. The fact that he was so high up on the voting was pretty encouraging, however.

The other encouraging sign in these tallies is that voters of the BBA will not punish a player severely for playing for a bad team. Ryan Zimmerman of the NL East bottomfeeding Washington Nationals ranked seventh in the voting this year, and rightfully so given another fine season. The voters did not knock him down a whole lot of pegs for playing for the last place Nats, and this makes total sense. If we want to know how good a player is, why should he be judged within the context of his team? Zimmerman cannot contribute in all aspects of the game, just the ones he can control, and in those aspects he did very well for himself.

The AL race was a lot more even, with voting more spread out among various candidates. Josh Hamilton taking it shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it was good to see other deserving names such as Evan Longoria, Adrian Beltre, and Robinson Cano near the top of the list along with the obvious Miguel Cabrera selection. Also, among the one-vote players, I’m glad someone recognized Brett Gardner’s excellent season. That guy is an amazing defender.

Congratulations to Josh Hamilton and Joey Votto for winning the 2010 Stan Musial Awards for their respective leagues, and congratulations to the rest of the BBA for another fine season of baseball and blogging completed. Hats off to all of you who voted, and let’s do this again at the end of 2011!