This is the BBA ballot for the 2009 AL Rookie of the Year vote from Baseball Reflections.

Honorable mentions include Tigers SP Rick Porcello who might have gotten a top 3 vote if he was better supported by the Tigers, likewise with Rays SP Jeff Niemann. Last but not least, Rangers SS Elvis Andrus who is by far the best defensive player out of all six listed here, but his offense fell just shy of the rest.

Here is the explanation of my madness…I mean methodology…due to the fact that players came up from the minors at all different times, I took the percentage of their total hits and games played (depending on the category) as a way to determine how each player fared against the others in their rookie class.

What makes this more difficult is the fact that you have two players in the more skilled positions of catcher and shortstop while the other two played third base and left field. My tendency was to give intangible points to the players in the skilled positions. Likewise, I was tempted to give the same intangible points for stolen bases, but then realized that wouldn’t be fair to the catcher in this year’s class, Wieters. In other years, I would have kept it included, plus it’s not the best way to calculate it’s percentage to hits unless I counted walks and hit by pitches along with it.

I admit my system is a bit flawed, but aren’t they all? When all is said and done, the top 3 all came within a point of each other in a VERY tight race. Andrus was actually six points behind the leader and four points behind the third place finisher!

The numbers in parenthesis is the point total awarded to each player. First place in a category received one point; therefore, the player with the lowest point total wins.

So, without further ado…here’s my ballot:

3 — Baltimore Orioles Catcher Matt Wieters (26 points) …1 point

His line looked like this…

96 games with 102 hits, of those 75% were singles, 16% were doubles, 1% were triples, 9% were homeruns with a 45% of RBI to games played, a BA of .288, OBP of .340, a K/BB ratio of 3.07 (ouch), 36% run to games percentage with a .991 fielding percentage and UZR is not calculated for his position, but I gave him a second place vote due to his high fielding percentage with Andrus getting the first place vote for UZR.

2 — Baltimore Orioles Left Fielder Nolan Reimold (25 points) …3 points

His line looked like this…

104 games with 100 hits, of those 65% were singles, 17% were doubles, 2% were triples, 14% were homeruns with a 43% of RBI to games played, a BA of .279, OBP of .365, a K/BB ratio of 1.64, 47% run to games percentage with a .973 fielding percentage and UZR of -10.1 (ouch).

1 — Chicago White Sox Third Baseman Gordon Beckham (24 points) …5 points

White Sox 3B Gordon Beckham

His line looked like this…

102 games with 102 hits, of those 58% were singles, 27% were doubles, 1% were triples, 14% were homeruns with a 62% of RBI to games played, a BA of .270, OBP of .347, a K/BB ratio of 1.59, 57% run to games percentage with a .952 fielding percentage and UZR of  -1 (not good).

OK – now that it’s out of the way, I have to admit that I’m a little perturbed at the outcome…I would NEVER have guessed that Reimold would be in the top three, let alone second. I thought this race would be between Wieters and Andrus with the young catcher getting the nod, but I just couldn’t allow myself to NOT do this by the numbers!

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