BBA Willie Mays Award

[Note: Ted and I are members of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, and along with Michael Jong of Marlin Maniac we comprise the Florida/Miami chapter of the BBA. As BBA members, we have been asked to vote for the BBA's end-of-year awards through our blog. This is our ballot for the NL Willie Mays Award, given to the best rookie.]

This year's NL rookies were a veritable bumper crop, with much hype heading into the season. All three of our vote-getters were heralded heading into Spring Training, and all three have so far lived up to expectations. Here's our ballot:

1. Jason Heyward, OF, Atlanta
2. Buster Posey, C, San Francisco
3. Mike Stanton, OF, Florida

If you were to go purely on WAR (which isn't an unreasonable move), Heyward wins in a landslide, with 5.0 WAR compared to Posey's 3.9 and Stanton's 2.7 (and Marlins fans clamoring for Gaby Sanchez, please note that his WAR came in at 2.4 despite playing in 51 more games than Stanton, who also out-OPSed Sanchez .833 to .789). Posey did equaled Heyward's 18 home runs in 180 fewer plate appearances, but Heyward had a way better OBP (mostly because he walked at over twice the rate of Posey). And believe me, Ted and I did not like having to choose between a Brave and a Seminole.

You can read Michael's ballot at Marlin Maniac.