Harper & Donaldson deservedly win MVPs. photo via si.com
There’s few long running posts I have managed to do year after year in this blog; this is one of them. Every year I predict the awards, then report on how my predictions went after the fact. And then I brag about how good a job I did in reading the tea leaves and predicting the awards.
This is that post for 2015 🙂
Here’s the same prediction posts with my BBWAA award prediction results for 2014 (6 for 8), 2013 (8 for 8), 2012 (7 for 8), 2011 (8 for 8), and 2010 (8 for 8).
For 2015, here were my original predictions and the actual winners for the major BBWAA Awards plus the “Comeback” awards for 2015:
My Final Predictions with discussion: We went 7 for 8 in predictions for 2015. I missed on the NL manager of the year.
- NL MVP: Predicted Bryce Harper. Actual winner: Harper unanimously. After all the angst about narrative, the voters did the right thing and selected the only guy who made sense to select.
- NL Cy Young: Predicted Jake Arrieta. Actual winner: Arrieta, with 17 1st place votes. Scherzer 5th.
- NL Rookie: Predicted Kris Bryant. Actual winner: Bryant. Unanimous winner, no real challenger in the NL.
- NL Manager: Predicted Terry Collins. Actual winner: Joe Maddon, with 18 1st place votes. My guess (Collins) came in third. This was probably a dumb prediction; I should have “read the tea leaves” a bit more in terms of narrative, which drives these awards so much, and correlated the fact that it was the Cubs (a high profile team), Maddon (a high profile manager) and the fact that the Cubs did in reality really exceed expectations this year.
- AL MVP: Predicted Josh Donaldson. Actual winner: Donaldson, with 23 1st place votes over Mike Trout, who many argue (yet again) had a better statistical season.
- AL Cy Young: Predicted Dallas Keuchel. Actual winner: Keuchel with 22 1st place votes over David Price‘s 8.
- AL Rookie: Predicted Carlos Correa. Actual winner: Correa, in a close race over Francisco Lindor (17-13 in terms of 1st place votes)
- AL Manager: Predicted Jeff Banister. Actual winner: Banister with 17 1st place votes
In my 2015 post I also predicted the “Comeback Player of the year awards,” given a couple of weeks ago.
- NL Comeback: Predicted Matt Harvey. Actual winner: Harvey, as announced on 11/5/15. Really no better option in the NL than Harvey, who had a very solid season after missing the entirety of 2014 with Tommy John surgery.
- AL Comeback: Predicted Prince Fielder. Actual winner: Fielder, as announced on 11/5/15. Really, unless you were going to give Alex Rodriguez the award for his drug-related suspension, there was no better NL candidate.
Other Awards given that I don’t try to predict anymore.
- Fielding Bible Awards: not an official award but certainly a better way of evaluating defenders than the Gold Gloves (though, to be fair, they’re getting much much better at identifying the true best defenders year in, year out).
- Gold Gloves; A couple of questionable awards for the Gold Gloves; we’ll post a separate fielding award post reviewing the Gold Gloves, Fielding Bible awardees and look at the various defensive metrics to see if/how they all align.
- Silver Sluggers: Bryce Harper wins, no real surprises.
- Hank Aaron awards for “Most Outstanding Offensive Player” in each league: Bryce Harper and Josh Donaldson, who not surprisingly is who I chose for my MVP predictions. I kinda wish this was a more prevalent award than the constant arguing we have about MVP.
- Relievers of the Year: formerly known as the “Fireman’s reliever awards” and now named for legendary relievers Mariano Rivera/Trevor Hoffman: won this year by Andrew Miller of the Yankees, Mark Melancon of the Pirates.
- Sporting News Executive of the Year: Toronto’s Alex Anthopoulis, who announced he was stepping down the same day he got the award.
- A slew of other Sporting News awards, mimicking the BBWAA awards: googleable but more or less following the above.
- MLB Player’s Choice Awards: Donaldson beats out Harper for POTY; also awards BBWAA-emulating awards that more or less follow how the actual BBWAA awards went.
- Links to all the awards I know of plus the full off-season schedule of events is on my 2015-16 Off-Season Baseball Calendar.
That’s it for the silly season! On to the fun business of player moves for 2016.