ROTY Commentary

Congratulations go out to Evan Longoria and Geovany Soto for picking up Rookie of the Year honors. Both were fairly easy to call, but there was still a lot to discuss in the voting.

I fully expected Longoria to win, but I did not expect it to be unanimous. I figured Alexei Ramirez would garner a handful of first place votes, especially from Chicago writers. I mean Fukodome got a second place vote on a national league ballot, but a guy who actually performed well this year can't get a first? Ridiculous. I'm glad to see Mike Aviles got some love, but Jacoby Ellsbury's were a bit overvalued, I think. Aviles was better statistically in every other category. Joey Devine and Brad Ziegler got some attention, too, although Devine got one second place vote and Ziegler got a third, so that may have been a California writer's ballot. Just speculation.

My Standings	Voting Results
1 Mike Aviles	1 Evan Longoria (28 1st->140 pts)
2 Denard Span	2 Alexei Ramirez (18 2nd 5 3rd->59 pts
3 Evan Longoria	3 Jacoby Ellsbury (7 2nd 5 3rd->26 pts)
4 Alexei Ramirez	4 Mike Aviles (2 2nd 3 3rd->9 pts)
5 Armando Gallaraga	5 Armando Gallaraga (9 3rd->9 pts)
6 Jacoby Ellsbury	6 Joey Devine (1 2nd->3 pts)
7 Nick Blackburn	7 Denard Span (3 3rd->3 pts)
8 Joba Chamberlain	8 Nick Blackburn, Joba Chamberlain, Brad Ziegler (1 3rd->1 pt)
9 Greg Smith
10 David Murphy

The National League is where the voters really embarrassed themselves. Geovany Soto was a good pick. I personally preferred Joey Votto, but to excel at a position as tough as catcher in your rookie year deserves recognition. The embarrassment falls on the 4th place vote-getter. Edinson Volquez picked up three second place votes despite not being a rookie. I don't really know what is more embarrassing, the fact that three "esteemed" baseball writers don't know the rookie qualifications, or that fact that they didn't give him first place votes considering he is also a dark horse candidate for the Cy Young! The fact that Kosuke Fukodome picked up two votes, one of which was a second place, yet Hiroki Kuroda garnered none is also laughable considering Fukodome was an embarrassment outside of his four hit game, while Kuroda put up a sub4 ERA!

My Standings	Voting Results
1 Joey Votto	1 Geovany Soto (31 1st 1 2nd->158 pts)
2 Geovany Soto	2 Joey Votto (1 1st 21 2nd 8 3rd->76 pts
3 Hiroki Kuroda	3 Jair Jurrjens (6 2nd 16 3rd->34 pts)
4 Jair Jurrjens	4 Edinson Volquez :( (3 2nd->9 pts)
5 Jorge Campillo	5 Jay Bruce (7 3rd->7 pts)
6 Kosuke Fukodome	6 Kosuke Fukodome (1 2nd 1 3rd->4 pts)
7 Blake DeWitt
8 Jay Bruce
9 John Lannan
10 Johnny Cueto