The votes have been tallied and Buster Posey and Neftali Feliz have won the Baseball Writers Association of America’s 
Rookie of the Year Awards.
Posey, of the San Francisco Giants, received 20 of the 32 first place votes beating out Jason Heyward to win the award. Earlier in the offseason, Heyward won Baseball America’s Rookie of the Year Award.
The 23-year-old Posey had a higher batting average and slugging percentage than Heyward and finished with a .305 batting average with 18 home runs and 67 RBIs. Heyward finished with one of the highest on-base percentages in an age-20 season all time, but the voters were swayed toward Posey.
Jaime Garcia and Gaby Sanchez finished third and fourth respectively. Neil Walker, Starlin Castro, Ike Davis, Jose Tabata and Jonny Venters also received votes.
Feliz, of the Texas Rangers, also finished with 20 first place votes out of 28 possible votes in the American League to beat out Austin Jackson. As a closer, Feliz notched 40 saves this year for the AL Champion Rangers.
Jackson hit .297 this year but some voters may have considered him to have a little luck on his side since he had a .383 BABIP. Danny Valencia of the Twins finished third, receiving one of the two second place votes that didn’t go to Feliz or Jackson.
Wade Davis, John Jaso, Brian Matusz and Brennan Boesch also received votes.
As with seemingly every other award, there will certainly be some people questioning the voting. While Posey and Heyward were both worthy candidates, it recently came out that one writer didn’t list Heyward on his ballot at all.
The writer, Dejan Kovacevic of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, gave his second and third place votes to Pirates Neil Walker and Jose Tabata. Tabata. Tabata, like Heyward, is also an outfielder. Heyward bested Tabata in just about every major stat (HR, RBI, H, R, OPS, etc.) except batting average and stolen bases. To sum it up, Tabata finished the year with 2.0 WAR while Jason Heyward accumulated 5.0.
While Posey won by 22 points, it would have been a shame had Heyward been cost the award because of a rogue writer clearly showing home-team bias and ignoring what actually happened this past baseball season.
In the end, the writers picked two deserving candidates, Posey and Feliz, who met in the World Series. With one of the more talented Rookie classes in recent memory (remember, Stephen Strasburg likely would have factored into the decision had he not been injured) there should be plenty of stars lighting up the diamond in coming years.
Used with permission of the author.
Along with contributing to Sports Climax, Brett Kettyle is the Atlanta Braves Community Leader on Bleacher Report and maintains a Braves column for MTR Media. Follow Brett on Twitter.
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