The postseason baseball awards are beginning to trickle out and there's already been an egregious error. Not only did the baseball writers get it wrong for the National League Rookie of the Year, they weren't even close.
Let me throw some stats at you. How does an 11-4 record with a 2.89 ERA and 116 strikeouts and just 46 walks in 127.2 innings pitched sound?
Pretty good right? Maybe even good enough to be in the Cy Young mix? Well, apparently, it wasn't even good enough to be in the ROY mix, as Braves phenom Tommy Hanson found out.
Hanson finished a distant third behind winner Chris Coghlan of the Florida Marlins and the Phillies' J.A. Happ. I'm not saying those players didn't have good seasons, just that neither performed at Hanson's level.
So why then did Hanson receive 37 total votes to Coghlan's 105 and Happ's 94? Because baseball writers are a bunch of prehistoric creatures roaming the earth and looking for anyway to show that they are still relevant.
For the record, Coghlan, who's 17 first-place votes were four more than all other NL rookies combined received, had a very good on base of .390, a more than respectable OPS of .850, but an un-meaty total of nine home runs in 504 at bats.
But ding, ding, ding! He posted a .321 batting average! And there's the answer. Nevermind that he had a .365 average on balls in play, fifth-highest in the NL or that despite his Jacoby Ellsbury-esque pop, he possesses Jose Molina-like speed with eight steals. And as a converted second baseman playing outfield for the first time this year, he's not exactly the second coming of Willie Mays when it comes to roaming Land Shark Stadium.
Happ on the other hand, wasn't as impressive as Hanson, but had similar stats with his 12-4 record and 2.93 ERA. He also pitched for a contender, something that the writers usually eat up, but even that wasn't enough to prevent the third-best candidate from winning this award. It wasn't enough to offset a bunch of bloop singles.
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