At the end of the season, 11 Beyond the Box Score writers held our own vote for the most important annual MLB awards, and last week we unveiled the first of the 2011 BtBWAA awards results by naming Toronto's Alex Anthopoulos our MLB Executive of the Year. This week, we're moving on to the Rookies of the Year—the NL results will be released Thursday, and the AL results are a couple inches down on your screen.
As with the real RoY voting, each writer picked their top three players, and votes were scored on a 5-3-1 scale. Here are the top finishers: (number of first-place votes in parentheses)
| 1. | Michael Pineda, Mariners — 41 (7) |
| 2. | Dustin Ackley, Mariners — 21 (2) |
| 3. | Brett Lawrie, Blue Jays — 10 |
| 4. | Eric Hosmer, Royals — 9 (1) |
| 5. | Alexi Ogando, Rangers — 6 (1) |
| 6. | Zach Britton, Orioles — 4 |
| 7. | Jeremy Hellickson, Rays — 3 |
| 8. | Desmond Jennings, Rays — 2 |
| T9. | Vinnie Pestano, Indians — 1 |
| T9. | Jemile Weeks, Athletics — 1 |
If anyone's interested, with my ballot, I picked Ackley, then Lawrie, then Pestano, and to be honest I'm not quite sure why. If I voted again today, Lawrie would be my No. 1 and I'd probably put Pineda second. I stand by my picking Pestano, though, and not just because I'm a Tribe fan: he had a fantastic season (fun fact: fWAR has him as more valuable than Hellickson this year despite Hellickson's pitching more than thrice as many innings) and I figured (correctly, as it turns out) that he wouldn't get any love from anyone else.
As an aside, I find it amusing that the Mariners got more points than the other 13 teams combined. My theory: some of our writers are involved in a secret conspiracy orchestrated by the pro-Seattle lobby. I can't prove anything, but I have reason to believe that a BtB writer who I am not at liberty to name (it's J-Doug) is actually a double-agent working undercover for Starbucks to help them infiltrate a blog about baseball statistics. It's all part of the plan.
Stay tuned for the NL results on Thursday.