Here are the SB Nation Rookie of the Year awards, as voted by SB Nation bloggers. The scoring is five points for a first-place ballot, three for a second, and one for a third.
| National League | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan Braun | 13 | 6 | 2 | 85 |
| Troy Tulowitzki | 7 | 9 | 3 | 65 |
| Hunter Pence | - | 4 | 9 | 21 |
| Kevin Kouzmanoff | 1 | - | - | 5 |
| James Loney | - | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Micah Owings | - | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Chris Young | - | - | 2 | 2 |
| Yovani Gallardo | - | - | 2 | 2 |
| Tim Lincecum | - | - | 1 | 1 |
| American League | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dustin Pedroia | 15 | 4 | - | 87 |
| Jeremy Guthrie | 1 | 6 | 2 | 25 |
| Brian Bannister | 2 | 2 | 4 | 20 |
| Daisuke Matsuzaka | - | 3 | 5 | 14 |
| Reggie Willits | 1 | 1 | 1 | 9 |
| Delmon Young | - | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| Hideki Okajima | - | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Rafael Perez | - | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Travis Buck | - | - | 1 | 1 |
| Rafael Perez | - | - | 1 | 1 |
I voted Braun, Pence, Loney for their off-the-charts offensive numbers. The voting took place before the playoffs. I only watched Colorado maybe five or six times during the season and probably didn't get enough glimpses of Tulowitzki's defense. If I'd gotten to watch the playoffs before voting, I might have put Tulowitzki on the ballot.
Braun's defense was a complete disaster, but the guy hit 34 homers despite not even getting to the big leagues until June. Every time I watched him, he'd mess up something on defense, then make up for it and then some on offense. He might win MVP awards as a corner outfielder.
As for Pence and Loney, it's really hard to ignore guys who put up an OPS+ of 130. Both only played around 100 games, but I'm more interested in voting for guys who play really, really well than in guys who are steady. As for Tulowitzki, I saw a guy who hit .256/.327/.393 on the road. That's not bad for a rookie and a good defensive shortstop, and it's not as if his excellent work at home should be completely discounted, but this was a really outstanding year for rookies in the National League.
I didn't vote in the American League, but that wasn't so interesting anyway. If I could've, I would've voted for Pedroia, Guthrie and Matsuzaka, in that order.
UPDATE: I've been looking at other blogs and reading opinions about the NL Rookie of the Year. I think I probably messed up. Part of my reasoning in not putting Tulowitzki on the ballot was that I looked at the 20-run difference between Tulowitzki and Butcher Braun in VORP, and assumed that there's no way Tulowitzki could make up that difference. I also gave Braun a little extra credit for just having such phenomenal numbers for a rookie, and docked Tulowitzki a little further for hitting like Jason Bartlett outside Coors Field. I knew that Tulowitzki was a much better defender than Braun, but it's really tough to make up a 20- or 30-run difference between two players. I think the only advanced fielding metric I had access to at the time was FRAA, which actually did show a massive difference. But FRAA doesn't weigh play by play data, to the best of my knowledge, so I don't consider it that trustworthy. The one I usually want to see is UZR, and I didn't have access to that when I submitted the ballot. Anyway, it turns out that FRAA, Chone, and probably also UZR show massive, 40+-run differences between Tulowitzki and Braun. With three systems all showing the same thing, it probably means something. If I had known all this, my ballot would have come out completely different. Mea culpa.