It's award season, and the NL and AL Comeback Awards winners were announced earlier today. Congrats to Chris Carpenter of the Cardinals and Aaron Hill of the Blue Jays for winning the award. It is supposed to go to the players that "re-emerged on the baseball field during a given season."
I decided to take the balloting results and compare the player's WAR from this year, a recent low year and a recent high. Then. I took the total swing in WAR from the high to the low to this season's WAR value . For example Aaron Hill had 3.5 WAR in 2007, 0.5 in 2008 and then 4.2 this year for a total swing of 6.7 WAR ((3.5 WAR -0.5WAR)+(4.2 WAR - 0.5 WAR).
NL Comeback Award Comparison
Here is a comparison of the vote getters in the NL:
| Voting Rank | Name and Team | High Year | Previous High (WAR) | Low Year | Lowest Between High and 2009 (WAR) | 2009 WAR | Total Swing in WAR |
| 1 | Chris Carpenter, STL | 2006 | 5.2 | 2007 | 0.2 | 5.6 | 10.4 |
| 2 | Yovani Gallardo, MIL | 2007 | 2.6 | 2008 | 0.4 | 2.8 | 4.6 |
| 3 | Josh Johnson, FLA | 2006 | 2.5 | 2007 | 0.2 | 5.3 | 7.4 |
| 4 | Todd Helton, COL | 2007 | 4.9 | 2008 | 1.5 | 3.5 | 5.4 |
| 5 | Aaron Boone, HOU | 2007 | 0.3 | 2008 | -0.2 | -0.3 | 0.4 |
| 6 | Pedro Martinez, PHI | 2007 | 1.2 | 2008 | 0.1 | 0.6 | 1.6 |
| 7 | Luis Castillo, NYM | 2007 | 2.4 | 2008 | 0.6 | 1.4 | 2.6 |
| 8 | Jeff Weaver, LAD | 2007 | 0.9 | 2008 | 0 | 0.6 | 1.5 |
| 9 | Jonny Gomes, CIN | 2007 | 0 | 2008 | -1.2 | 0.8 | 3.2 |
| 10 | Peter Moylan, ATL | 2007 | 0.6 | 2008 | 0 | 1.5 | 2.1 |
| 11 | Mike MacDougal, WSH | 2007 | 0.2 | 2008 | 0.1 | -0.2 | -0.2 |
NL Observations and the AL Comparisons after the jump
NL observations:- The voters got the winner correct.
- The voters also got the next four correct with the exception of Gallardo being a little high
- The wasn't a whole lot to choose from after the first 4.
- In two cases the players WAR value did not increase in 2009 from the previous years. In one case, Aaron Boone had open heart surgery this off season and even getting on the field should warrant some votes. I have no clue how Mike MacDougal end up with votes.
AL Comeback Award Comparison
Now here is a comparison of the vote getters in the AL:
| Voting Rank | Name and Team | High Year | Previous High (WAR) | Low Year | Lowest Between High and 2009 (WAR) | 2009 WAR | Total Swing in WAR |
| 1 | Aaron Hill, TOR | 2007 | 3.5 | 2008 | 0.5 | 4.2 | 6.7 |
| 2 | Victor Martinez, BOS | 2007 | 5.1 | 2008 | 0.9 | 4.8 | 8.1 |
| 3 | Michael Cuddyer, MIN | 2007 | 2.1 | 2008 | -0.2 | 2.1 | 4.6 |
| 4 | Jorge Posada, NYY | 2007 | 7.1 | 2008 | 0.8 | 4 | 9.5 |
| 5 | Russell Branyan, SEA | 2006 | 1.1 | 2007 | 0.5 | 2.8 | 2.9 |
| 6 | Scott Podsednik, CWS | 2005 | 1.4 | 2006 | -0.5 | 1.5 | 3.9 |
| 7 | Juan Rivera, LAA | 2006 | 2.7 | 2008 | -0.7 | 3.5 | 7.6 |
| 8 | Rajai Davis, OAK | 2007 | 1 | 2008 | 0.6 | 3.5 | 3.3 |
| 9 | Andruw Jones, TEX | 2007 | 3.6 | 2008 | -0.9 | 0.7 | 6.1 |
| 10 | Travis Hafner, CLE | 2007 | 2.2 | 2008 | -0.8 | 1.1 | 4.9 |
| 11 | Fernando Rodney, DET | 2007 | 0.7 | 2008 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.2 |
Observations on the voting for the AL Comeback Award:
- The winner here did not have the largest swing in WAR, Hill was actually 4 in total swing behind Posada, Martinez, and Rivera.
- The swing values in the AL were much more than in the NL on average. There was only one swing value of less than 2.9 in the AL, but 6 in the NL.
- I need to look back over 5 years to see the comeback of Scott Podsednik. He has the following WAR values from 2005 to 2009: 1.4, -0.5,-0.1, -0.4, 1.5
- Fernando Rodney, like Aaron Boone and Mike MacDougal got votes for actually being worse this year than last year.
- There seems to be a lot of love for Russell Branyan despite being having the 9th highest swing in WAR.