BBA Awards: Walter Johnson Award

The Baseball Bloggers Association is conducting their post-season awards voting. Today, the Walter Johnson Award given to the best pitchers of 2010 as determined by the BBA, will be announced. The four blogs in the Pittsburgh chapter have elected to do our own chapter voting, then to submit our two ballots to the BBA based on our own consensus. Because transparency is an important part of the BBA awards voting process, it’s my duty as president of the Pittsburgh chapter to post both my votes and the ballots that we submitted to the BBA in advance of today’s deadline:

It’s tempting to say that when classifying pitchers in the National League this year there’s Roy Halladay and then there’s everyone else, but remember that post-season award voting is based on the regular season. Halladay was excellent during the regular season and a flat-out horse, tossing 250 innings, but guys like Josh Johnson and Ubaldo Jiminez were nearly as good or arguably better this year. The difference, though, is the innings. Johnson was amazing this year, but he only pitched 186 innings, nearly 65 fewer than Halladay. And Jiminez was great over 221 innings, but just not as good as Halladay. So Halladay gets my first place vote and I have Jiminez second, because his first half (which counts every bit as much as the second half in terms of the standings) was sensational and because he threw a few more innings than Johnson. So my ballot is:

  1. Roy Halladay
  2. Ubaldo Jiminez
  3. Josh Johnson
  4. Adam Wainwright
  5. Tim Lincecum
After putting my ballot in with my other Pirate blogging luminaries (Jim from North Side Notch, Brian from Raise the Jolly Roger, and Tom from Rum Bunter), the two official ballots submitted to the BBA are nearly identical to mine, with only Johnson and Jiminez switched:
  1. Roy Halladay
  2. Josh Johnson
  3. Ubaldo Jiminez
  4. Adam Wainright
  5. Tim Lincecum
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