The winner of the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award will be announced Monday, followed by the American League MVP on Tuesday. As a 21-year member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, it is my sincere hope that my brethren make the right decisions.
It has long been fashionable for fans to second-guess the BBWAA choices for the post-season awards. That is perfectly natural and acceptable, as no sport prompts second-guessing quite like baseball or has a more passionate and analytical fan base. However, the criticism has been ratcheted up in recent years thanks to the internet giving more fans and analysts a stronger voice.
I have always defended my fellow BBWAA members by saying that each one of them who fills out a ballot does so with sincerity. However, all voters’ credibility took a big hit this past week when results of the NL Rookie of the Year balloting was announced and it was revealed that Reds right-hander Edinson Volquez received three second-place votes.
Now, the BBWAA got it right by selecting Cubs catcher Geovany Soto as the NL’s top rookie with Reds first baseman Joey Votto placing second and Braves right-hander Jair Jurrjens finishing third. If I had a Rookie of the Year vote, that is how it would have looked. By right of full disclosure, I had an NL Cy Young Award vote and went with Tim Lincecum, Johan Santana, and Brandon Webb.
Volquez certainly had a fine year but there was one small problem: he wasn’t a rookie. The maximum number of innings a pitcher can log in his career and still be considered a rookie is 50, and Volquez had logged 80 with the Rangers from 2005-07.
The BBWAA stresses accountability and makes all votes public. Thus, it can be said that the three writers who voted for Volquez were the Newark Star-Ledger’s Jeremy Cothran, the Los Angeles Daily News’ John Kilma, and the North County Times’ Jay Paris.
Everyone makes mistakes, but the embarrassment of Volquez showing up on three Rookie of the Year ballots points out the changing face of the media and how it is beginning to have an impact on baseball’s major awards. Newspapers are losing circulation and advertising revenue at alarming rates, which has necessitated massive layoffs, the use of inexperienced journalists on major beats, and more reporters being forced to multi-task and cover a variety of sports rather than specialize in one.
The BBWAA, though, had allowed only those from daily newspapers, major wire services and the Sporting News, whose writers were grandfathered in from the BBWAA’s inception in 1908 when the publication was the bible of baseball rather than “All Things Football, and More Football on Top of That.”
This year, internets writers were admitted for the first time with the criteria being that they had to be employees of websites also credentialed by Major League Baseball for such major events as the All-Star Game and World Series. That list includes SI.com, ESPN.com, FoxSports.com, Yahoo.com, CBSSports.com, MSNBC.com, and MurrayChass.com.
The topic of whether the list of websites that should be considered for BBWAA membership should be expanded was a major topic of conversation during the organization’s World Series meeting in Philadelphia last month. Baseball Prospectus was a large part of the discussion, and the idea appeared to be well-received by many in attendance.
While I am already a BBWAA member by virtue of my ink-stained job as the baseball writer at the Beaver County Times in suburban Pittsburgh, time will tell if BP writers gain membership. However, when Edinson Volquez gets Rookie of the Year votes, it only strengthens the idea that BP writers should be admitted.
I was waiting for an article on this topic from BP. I'm not sure the error strengthens the case for BP writers getting votes (I think that case is already pretty strong), but the three who voted for Volquez should definitely lose their votes.
NO wonder Bert Blyleven can never get in the HOF, the BBWA probably think he's still playing!! You would hope that some shred of research is done for these things.
The question I have not yet seen answered is whether the individual writers get a ballot of eligible candidates or whether they supply their own names.
If Volquez appeared on a ballot, I think the three writers are off the hook and those who prepare the ballots should step forward and accept blame. If they supplied the names on their own, they deserve the blame.
In either case, I say that s/he who has never made a mistake should cast the first stone.
Which raises another question. Why does the ballot NOT list the eligible candidates? I can frankly understand why someone might miss Volquez's ineligibility. In those three years with Texas, he pitched in a total of 20 games (6, 8, 6) with 12.2, 33.1, and 34 innings (with a 3-11 record, which might have tipped people off, even if they weren't fully clued in on his IP). It's not like he was a prominent--or even a minor--part of any team's pitching staff, certainly not for a full year.. Why not avoid issues like this and give people a ballot that lists the eligibles?
A big reason is the fact that there were 306 rookie position players and 237 rookie pitchers this year. Obviously, most of those guys had a negligible impact and don't deserve consideration. I'm just not sure I want someone from MLB or the BBWAA deciding who should and shouldn't be on the ballot.
Sure the writers should be more on top of this stuff, but the BBWAA is at most to blame here. Its one thing for someone to vote for Volquez, its a whole nother thing to actually count them.
BP writers should get a vote. What about radio broadcasters? Should a guy who sees 162 games get a vote also? I understand that they aren't baseball writers, however they see at least as many games as the beat writers do. An argument against is that they are either employed by a team or are broadcasting with the approval of the team. Can you tell me that Vince Scully doesn't know enough to have a valid opinion on the MVP, Cy Young or Rookie of the Year? I bet he knew Volquez wasn't a rookie.
Other opinions gentlemen and ladies?
I don't think Vin Scully would be immune to such a mistake. The voters who made the mistake were beat writers for the Mets, Padres, and Dodgers, I think some slack (not a lot mind you) should be given. I wouldn't be surprised if neither of the three looked at a Rangers roster last year, much less saw a game. Volquez pitched 34 innings in 2007, I think it is too much to expect every one of the BBWAA be so careful for all of their votes (they do have plenty of work to do writing about Peavy, Manny, and the Met's future closer). You know Volquez pitched in A-ball last year, you check and see that he threw 34 innings last year and you vote for the guy (who would have thought 2008 was the 4th year he pitched in the bigs?). Besides him pitching more than 50+ innings, is there any reason a guy who never pitched 35 innings in a season shouldn't be considered a rookie? Maybe all the voters were being rebels. Scully and other broadcasters, on top of being paid by teams, face a similar problem as these guys in that they see so much of one team and not a single game of 1/3 of all teams. Yeah, they may know baseball, but do they know enough about other teams to do better? It seems to me that this isn't that big of a deal.
It would take less than 30 seconds to look up a guy's career stat line. If you're using stats at all, it would take only 2 seconds to look at the "career" line below the "2008" line.
Isn't that the problem? There are enough BBWAA writers out there who believe that their opinions trump actual stats (because they *go to the actual games*) so fact-checking of that nature probably doesn't cross their mind. "I didn't see Volquez pitch before this year therefore he must be a rookie."
(Although, as an older and wiser sabermetrically inclined guy pointed out to me, its hardly the first time --- http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_1957.shtml#ALroy)
I assume you're referring here to Frank Malzone, who got one AL RotY vote (there were only first-place votes back then, no 5-3-1 thing) in 1957 despite having had over 120 ABs in previous seasons. This comment from the baseball-reference.com article on Rookie of the Year eligibility may or may not be germane: "It was not until the late 1950s that whom [sic] was a rookie was defined and the criteria has [sic] changed twice." If "whom was a rookie was defined" AFTER the 1957 voting, then the voter who went for Malzone gets off scot free. If before, then agreed, this was another, similar screwup, if the definition was the same as today. Anybody got ground truth on this one? In any case, one clueless BBWAA voter is bad, but three clueless ones is worse.
If I remember one of Bill James's annuals correctly, there was a ROY vote in the 1950s where the BBWAA had a separate pre-vote discussion to determine the eligibility of a particular player. They decided he was ineligible, but there was a protest vote for him anyway. I believe that player was Malzone. If so, this was the opposite situation of Volquez--the voter for Malzone was well aware of his ROY eligibility when he cast the vote.
I think this is unacceptable, really. These guys are professional baseball writer. A professional baseball writer should know that Edinson Volquez was a hot prospect in the Texas system who was rushed to the majors, and should take the ten seconds to look up his career IP. It's shameful.
"Vince" Scully? Anyway, there is NO excuse for this. A simply check of Volquez's career stat line prior to the vote would have saved these tools quite a bit of embarrassment.
If these awards are to mean anything, then something other than the BBWAA as currently constituted has to hand them out. It would be nice to think the BBWAA is expanding its membership because it realizes it simply can't do its job right; but the new members are just the same ol' same ol' mass media know-nothings. We'll know the BBWAA's serious about its credibility when it not only admits REAL analysts, but prunes the deadwood, too.
People who care about baseball as being something more than an occassional subject for a 1,5000-word piece hammered out 10 minutes before the filing deadline should welcome BBWAA gaffes that discredit that sorry, pretentious outfit (with apologies to Mr. Perronto, whose work I enjoy) - particularly this one, since it didn't influence the outcome.
John, one inference from your post is that the set of BBWAA member who vote on awards may be different from award to award (i.e., you voted on NL Cy Young but not on NL ROTY). I always thought that the same 2 beat writers from each city voted on all the awards. Can you clarify how the voting pool for each award is determined?
As it happens, I am the only other member of the BBWAA that writes for Prospectus -- that I know of -- and I don't contribute on the baseball side. I'm not nearly as senior as John (this was my fourth year) so I generally get to vote for only one award a year. Believe me, I consider it a great honor to get that vote. This year, it was AL Rookie of the Year. Since Longoria was a unanimous pick, I don't really have to tell you who I voted for.
For what it's worth, I've supported every measure put before us about including Web writers. I'm not sure I agree with John that this case strengthens the argument for more inclusion. I think it makes more of a statement that the whole thing is cracked. This was a hell of a black eye, as far as I'm concerned. I just had one award, but I spent about 2 1/2 hours crunching numbers and double-checking every team's season stats to make damn sure that I wasn't leaving anybody out -- or including anybody I wasn't supposed to. And this despite the fact that I strongly suspected that I was going to vote for Longoria all along because I watch 100s of games through the course of a season and spend many hours writing about and analyzing statistics. I would venture to say that among serious baseball fans, there are as many who know that Volquez got three votes as know that Soto won the actual award. That's a shame.
I took my vote so seriously because as someone who has an affinity for the numbers side of the game, I'm all too aware that 28 votes is an awfully small electorate. These awards mean a lot in a baseball history context so the privilege of a 1/28th say in the matter (1/32 in the NL) demands respect and attention.
It baffles me how something like this could have happened, especially in three separate cases. I guess working in Kansas City with the likes of Bob Dutton, Jeff Passan, Sam Mellinger & Joe Posnanski has spoiled me because I know that those guys are what the BBWAA is supposed to be all about.
I don't know anything about the guys John mentioned as having been the guilty parties. I wouldn't throw them out or anything, though. People make mistakes, even in what is supposed to be their area of expertise. For sports writers, those mistakes are a little more public than in most other professions, which is something else that should be kept in mind. I think the BBWAA should look at ways to avoid these kinds of errors. We could have done two things:
- Provide a list to each voter of eligible rookies -- with statistics. Yes, we should already know, but why run the risk of this sort of embarrassment?
- Ask the members who voted for the ineligible candidate to re-submit their ballots. If I had voted for Roy Hobbs, would that have counted, too?
It has been mentioned previously, but how about punishing those who voted for Volquez by revoking their rights to vote for at least a couple of seasons? I agree that the votes for Volquez are a huge embarrassment for the BBWAA. However, I do not think that just changing the ballots or procedures while still allowing those writers, who collectively committed the opprobrium , to vote on the awards sends the right message. I do not know if a temporary or permanent proscription is allowed under the current BBWAA bylaws. If there is no way to ban or censure members for gross incompetence then the rules should be changed to allow such action. If they, meaning the leadership of the BBWAA, do not make an effort to show that voting for Volquez was a very poor decision that will not be tolerated then it loses all of its remaining, already damaged, credibility. Then again, they could also regain some respect by banning Buster Olney from voting, allowing Neyer and Law in, or by taking Jack Morris off the HOF ballot, but none of those immediately mentioned ideas will, in all likelihood, ever come to pass.
Which statistics, RBI/W/S/E? We've seen which stats the average BBWAA voter values. Voters should be able to do their own research - made that much easier with the internet - as anyone who takes his job seriously would.
I imagine resubmissions would have been necessary if the misplaced 2nd-place votes had made a difference on the overall winner.
Do these gentlemen live in the isolation booth on the $64,000 question? Hadn't they noticed that no one had mentioned an all-star pitcher for the RofY award? Surely they read one or two of the hundreds of articles in September speculating on post-season awards? Surely they discussed the matter with their colleagues in the press box? Their wives? Their dogs?
Editorial review doesn't mean a whole lot. Editors at most regional papers don't know the subject matter as well as the reporter does, and they assume factual accuracy. An editor these days mostly reads for clarity and grammar, then posts the story.
It seems strange to me that these ballots were ever published. Having 3 errors in one season and none before? This had to have happend sometime in the past and there is a protocol for correcting the mistakes. I would bet that those responsible for the ballots thought Volquez was a rookie also.
If the rules allow the voters to vote for anyone, isn't it possible that Chipper Jones, for example, could be the '09 NL RoY? Stan Musial? Cap Anson? Joe Sheehan? The possiblities are endless.
"The BBWAA stresses accountability and makes all votes public."
I was wondering if someone could point me to the location for the voting. I visited the BBWAA site and couldn't find the votes by member, only the cumulative totals for each player receiving votes.
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I was waiting for an article on this topic from BP. I'm not sure the error strengthens the case for BP writers getting votes (I think that case is already pretty strong), but the three who voted for Volquez should definitely lose their votes.