I'm doing some more consolidating of the offseason awards I hand out.
Today, I'm cutting out the Gold Glove, mainly because fielding is hard to judge and checking out the UZR leaderboards on the Dodgers, I'm seeing Reed Johnson at number one, which seems acceptable except for how small the sample size is. Then, at number two, you have Casey Blake, which greatly surprised me.
So, I guess Casey Blake gets the Gold Glove award, but again, hard to judge.
Ok then. Rookie of the Year, another award with not a whole bunch of viable candidates.
Six players made their debuts this year: Carlos Monasterios, Russ Mitchell, Jon Link, John Lindsey, Kenley Jansen, and John Ely.
Russ Mitchell came up in September and didn't get a whole lot of experience. Jon Link got just 8.2 innings worth of work in.
You have to give John Lindsey an honorable mention for finally making it to the show but the poor guy got just twelve at-bats before breaking his hand. At least he got a base hit.
I give credit to Monasterios for jumping from the low minors and sticking the whole year on a major league roster. He had a couple of good moments, and was admirable for his ability to work out of the bullpen and make spot starts on short notice.
Unfortunately, not all of his 88.1 innings were of the highest quality. For example, he posted a 2.20 ERA in 28.2 innings in April and May, which was great. Then he posted a 5.43 ERA from June until the end of the season, which was not as great. Overall, he finished the season with a 4.38 ERA, which is pretty good for a guy who hadn't even sniffed the minors before this year.
That leaves us with our last two candidates: Ely and Jansen. This is actually pretty tough for me.
Jansen was fantastic. 0.67 ERA in 27 innings. 41 strikeouts to just 15 walks.
On the other hand, because Ely struggled through his last nine appearances (8.18 ERA in 44 IP) and raised his overall ERA on the season to 5.49, it makes it easy to forget that he was great through his first nine. After getting called up, Ely posted a 3.38 ERA in 56 innings through nine games, striking out 41 to 13 walks.
So, again, tough decision.
But I got to give it to Ely.
Taking nothing away from Jansen, because I thoroughly enjoyed watching him pitch this year and I think he's got a very bright future, but, at least for me, his 27 innings pitched can't trump the fact that John Ely was fourth on the list of Games Started for pitchers this year or that Ely racked up nine quality starts in his rookie campaign.
There's a lot of value in that, and as such, John Ely wins the "J's Dodger Blog 2010 Rookie of the Year" award.
Like the Gold Glove award, this one is pretty easy.
There were six players who made their major league debuts this season: Ronald Belisario, Brent Leach, Travis Schlichting, Xavier Paul, Mitch Jones, and Jamie Hoffmann.
Paul, Jones, and Hoffman had 14, 13, and 22 at-bats, respectively. Which means they were pretty insignificant during the season.
And talking about insignificant this season: Schlichting pitched 2.2 innings in 2 games this season.
Which leaves us with Brent Leach and Ronald Belisario.
Leach did have a pretty effective month and a half with the team during the season. Unfortunately, he was with the team for three months.
Meanwhile, Belisario appeared in 69 games and posted a 2.04 ERA. He was even a nominee for the "J's Dodger Blog 2009 Reliever of the Year" award. I mean, come on. This one was a run-away.
So, congratulations to Ronald Belisario, the "J's Dodger Blog 2009 Rookie of the Year."
There were a handful of rookies that came up this year for the Dodgers, but only three really made an impact. Here are your nominees for Rookie of the Year:
Clayton Kershaw
-Kershaw debuted May 25th and had a strong six inning outing against the St. Louis Cardinals. He appeared in 22 games in 2008, going 5-5 with a 4.26 ERA, striking out 100 batters in 107.2 innings. His best outing came on August 7th, in St. Louis, when he gave up one run over seven innings while striking out seven.
Cory Wade
-Wade got called up and made his first appearance April 25th. He brought his ERA down from 3.00 to 2.35 on May 9th, and from that point until the end of the season, his ERA never cracked 3.00 again. He went 2-1 with a 2.27 ERA in 55 games in his rookie season.
Blake DeWitt
-DeWitt won the starting 3rd base job by default coming out of Spring Training, but showed he had some staying power. By the end of a terrific May, DeWitt was batting .303 with five homeruns and 29 RBIs. He settled down after that, but finished 2008 batting .264, with nine homeruns and 52 RBIs and started over 100 games combined at both 2nd and 3rd base.
...and the Rookie of the Year is...
Cory Wade
Blake DeWitt was all the rage for the first couple months, and he was important, don't get me wrong, but he seriously faded after that. Clayton Kershaw was hyped up, and while he wasn't lights out, he was still impressive.
However, Cory Wade received no hype but was quietly one of the best and most consistent members on the pitching staff. He settled right into the bullpen and pitched like a multi-year veteran. He might not have the most brilliant career of the three players mentioned here, but if you want to talk about who had the best year this year, it was Cory Wade.
There you have it, Cory Wade, "J's Dodger Blog 2008 Rookie of the Year."
