2012 AL Willie Mays Award

Awards week continues.  After naming Oakland's Bob Melvin the winner of BBA's Connie Mack Award, today I get the honour of selecting the American League Willie Mays Award winner for best rookie.

There was a great crop of rookies in the AL this season.  Oakland's Yoenis Cespedes was a big part of the reason the A's surprised the baseball world by winning the AL West.  Chris Carter was another big part.  He only got called up in late June and hit 16 home runs in 67 games.  Boston's Will Middlebrooks got called up in May and was such a hot hitter he forced the Red Sox to trade away perennial all-star Kevin Youkilis. Baltimore called up prospect Manny Machado when they were fighting neck and neck with Tampa for the last wildcard spot. With him in the lineup they pulled away and almost caught the Yankees for the division.  In other seasons any of these players might have been good candidates to win the Rookie of the Year. But who to give it to this year?

2012 AL Connie Mack Award

As a member of the Baseball Blogger's Alliance, I have the privilege of voting for all the end-of-season awards.   The first one I am announcing this year is the Connie Mack for the Manager of the Year.

There were a lot of good candidates this year:
- Buck Showalter took a team that should have been barely .500 based on their runs scored differential, and won 93 games, and had a shot at the AL East division right up to the last day of the season.

- Bob Melvin took an Oakland team that traded away some of their best players in the offseason, and shocked the Rangers to win the AL West division.

-Robin Ventura took over the White Sox from Ozzie Guillen who failed to get them to .500, and had them atop the AL Central until the last week of the season

BBA Awards

As we settle in to watch the playoffs, it's also time to start thinking of the year end awards.  Over the next few days I will  post on this blog my ballot for each of the main awards.  As part of the Baseball Blogger's Alliance, I will be voting on the following awards for the American League:

Connie Mack Award (Best Manager)
Willie Mays Award  (Top Rookie)
Goose Gossage Award (Best Reliever)
Walter Johnson Award (Best Pitcher)
Stan Musial Award (Best Player)

There won't be a lot of suspense for some of these but I expect that there will be some that will generate some discussion and/or controversy.  I will do my best to explain why I made the choices I did in each post.
I will be disclosing one winner each day this week.  Stay tuned.