The Baseball Bloggers Alliance announced today that Andrew Bailey of the Oakland Athletics and Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates were selected in a vote of the membership as American League and National League Rookies of the Year.
Bailey, who stepped into Oakland’s closer role and recorded 26 saves with a sparkling 1.84 ERA, garnered seven of the nineteen first-place votes from the participating BBA blogs and a total of 48 points overall. Rick Porcello, who pitched for the Detroit Tigers in the tie-breaking playoff game versus the Minnesota Twins to culminate a strong season, finished second with four first-place selections and 36 total points.
“Even if Bailey hadn’t been bestowed with the closer role, those numbers out of the pen put him amongst the elite late inning pitchers,” stated the bloggers at The Tao of Stieb. ”Too bad he plays for Oakland and has a generic name–he should be as famous as Joba [Chamberlain],” noted Lisa at Subway Squawkers.
McCutchen started the year at AAA, but was called to the majors in June and made an immediate impact. His blend of power and speed were reflected in his twelve home runs and 22 steals in roughly a half season of work.
McCutchen received twelve of the twenty first place votes on his way to 65 points overall. Atlanta Braves pitcher Tommy Hanson was the runner-up with 50 points, including five first place nods.
“The sky is the limit for McCutchen and I think the Bucs have something special with him,” opined Jim at the Pirate blog North Side Notch. Larry at Wezen-Ball concurred, saying “[H]e gave the Pittsburgh crowd something to root for all season, with strong defense and a great campaign as a leadoff hitter.”
The complete voting results are as follows (first-place votes in parenthesis):
American League
Andrew Bailey, Oakland (9) 48
Rick Porcello, Detroit (4) 36
Elvis Andrus, Texas (3) 28
Jeff Niemann, Tampa Bay (2) 21
Matt Wieters, Baltimore (1) 13
Gordon Beckham, Chicago (1) 9
Brett Anderson, Oakland (1) 8
Noland Reimold, Baltimore 8
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 87 blogs spanning 28 of the 30 major league squads as well as those that focus on 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. Those blogs that are not dedicated to a specific team are allowed to vote on either the American League or National League award, but not both.
McCutchen.