The SB Nation baseball writers got together after the season and voted on a bunch of the same awards as the Baseball Writers of America. We'll be releasing the results over the next few days and today marks the Rookie of the Year voting.
Here is the voting results:
| Num | Name | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Craig Kimbrel | 22 | 4 | 2 | 124 |
| 2 | Danny Espinosa | 4 | 6 | 8 | 46 |
| 3 | Freddie Freeman | 8 | 3 | 27 | |
| 4 | Vance Worley | 1 | 5 | 3 | 23 |
| 5 | Wilson Ramos | 1 | 2 | 5 | 16 |
| 6 | Brandon Beachy | 1 | 4 | 7 | |
| 7 | Corey Luebke | 1 | 3 | ||
| 8 | Lucas Duda | 1 | 3 | ||
| 9 | Mark Melancon | 1 | 1 | ||
| 10 | Allen Craig | 1 | 1 | ||
| 11 | Kenley Jansen | 1 | 1 |
In an effort at full disclosure, here's how TCB's two writers (me and Tim) voted for the above:
David - Danny Espinosa 1st, Craig Kimbrel 2nd, Mark Melancon 3rd
Tim - Wilson Ramos 1st, Brandon Beachy 2nd, Craig Kimbrel 3rd
I'll explain my votes, but they're not hugely different from how the rest of the voting ended up. I went with Espinosa because I'm biased towards position players over closers. As good a season as Kimbrel had, he played in exactly half the games that Espinosa appeared in.
I also threw in a vote for Melancon, because I thought he was the most deserving of the Astros rookies and knew he wouldn't get a vote otherwise (he didn't). Other than that, it was a pretty understandable vote that was hurt by the lack of one true standout guy. Sure, Kimbrel played a crucial role, but there were no big position players who had outstanding years. It was just an underwhelming rookie class in the National League.
Tim: I'm going to piggy back on David's article to give you a peak into my thought process. Like David I prefer the position player. When I compared Ramos who's a catcher to Espinosa a second baseman, Ramos came out slightly better offensively. Ramos did play in fewer games but the fact that he's playing catcher and a pretty good one at that is what made me like him as my first vote.
When I dug into Beachy's numbers I came away impressed. He probably would of gotten more exposure had his teammate Kimbrel go bonkers as the closer. Still Beachy pitched almost double amount of innings Kimbrel did, hence my second and third pick.