I disagree with all you crazy bloggers

Part of the fun of partaking in the Baseball Bloggers Alliance postseason voting was the notion that maybe those of us who reside outside of the press box would get it right, and prove just how vastly superior we are to the washed up hacks in the BBWAA.

After reviewing the BBA press release from yesterday (hey, they quoted us!), all we can say is: Oops.

Mind you, our choice for AL Rookie of the Year, the A's Andrew Bailey, took the day with nine first place votes and 48 points total in the 5-3-1 scoring system. But what shocked us was that Brett Anderson, who we even considered as our choice at the top of our ballot, received one first place vote and our second place vote...and that's it.

(And full marks to the kids at Camden Crazies, who had the stones to put Anderson at the top of their list.)

To which we say: Really? Put Anderson's numbers up against second place finisher Rick Porcello (four first place votes), and Anderson pretty much takes the day across the board. Sure, Porcello's ERA starts with a number 3, but he got that tenth of a point by feasting on the lesser lights in the NL Central in interleague play.

We give the young Porcello full marks for his judo hip toss of Kevin Douchekilis, but there's no way he makes it to the top of our ballot.

Other oddities: Elvis Andrus had a good year with the glove, but that .702 OPS is not enough to carry him over the top in our mind. (Apparently, three people disagreed.)

Also, some people seemed to be voting based on who they thought had generated the most hype through the season, or who had the most potential. We can't imagine any other reason why someone would vote for Matt Wieters, or have him at the top of their list (as one voter did).

So to all of you who got your ballot completely wrong (and there seems to be a lot of you), we respectfully disagree. And we fart in your general direction.

Other place where we've been quoted today, aside from in my own brain
Infield Fly Rule has assembled a postseason roundtable, in which yours truly, the inimitable eyebleaf, some soccer loving dude and the lovely and beguiling Katy Unger offer our remembrances of this season past.

There were so many memories, fond and otherwise, that the roundtable will be broken into three parts, so keep checking back.

Our AL Rookie of the Year Ballot

So we've been a little but delinquent with reflecting this, but late in the season, we agreed to take part in the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, which is intended to be the blog world's answer to the BBWAA. There are a bunch of interesting blogs covering most of the teams across the Majors (including four Jays blogs), so it's worth a gander.

Mostly, we wanted to get involved with the BBA so that we could vote on the postseason awards. And while we were trying to be magnanimous and allow our fellow Jays bloggers the opportunity to vote on Manager of the Year (an award that we kinda hate anyway), we're jumping in to cast our ballot for the AL Rookie of the Year.

With a few weeks left in the season, we probably would have had a completely different final three, but with a little time to look over the performances of the handful of candidates, we narrowed the field down to three. And so, here's how we saw it.

1) Andrew Bailey, Oakland A's - 1.31 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, 91 Ks / 24 BBs, 26 saves in 83.1 IP.

Saves might be viewed amongst the more progressive thinkers as the most overestimated stat in baseball, and as such, a lot of voters might breeze past the Athletics' closer. But we couldn't look past that high K rate, and the excellent ratio. Even if Bailey hadn't been bestowed with the closer role, those numbers out of the pen put him amongst the elite late inning pitchers.

2) Brett Anderson, Oakland A's - 11-11, 4.06 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 150 Ks / 45 BBs in 175 IP.

With much of the focus through the season on the performances of the Tigers' Rick Porcello, the Rays Jeff Niemann and the Jays' Ricky Romero, Anderson's numbers in the end stand out across the board. His ERA was slightly higher than that of Niemann and Porcello, but his K rate, WHIP and K/BB ratio were much better.

3) Jeff Niemann, Tampa Rays - 13-9, 3.94 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, 125 Ks / 59 BBs in 180.2 IP.

Given the choice between Niemann and Porcello, the Rays starters' higher K rate tips the scales in his favour.

Falling off the ballot
Among those who fell just short of our ballot were the Tigers' Porcello (not enough Ks, too much of his stats racked up against the NL); the Orioles' Nolan Reimold (good numbers, but not enough to rate a mention); the Orioles' Matt Wieters (he'll be good eventually, but his performance this year didn't stack up); the Rangers' Elvis Andrus (love his defense, but hate the .702 OPS); and the Jays' Ricky Romero (wore out by season's end, and the last six weeks pretty much wiped him off the ballot.)

The Pasty White Hope gives us reasons to believe

More than this weekend's series win against a very good Angels squad, we were brought out of our prolonged funk by watching the play of Travis Snider throughout the series.

Given how quickly Snider ascended through the Jays' system, it is easy to forget that he'll be just 22 years old on Opening Day next year. But when you observe the manner in which he is maturing at the plate by leaps and bound, it's hard not to get excited about his potential over the next six seasons.

In particular, Snider's new-found willingness to take close pitches and to lay off breaking balls thrown on the inside part of the plate will help him immeasurably going forward. While he's still going to be a hitter who will strike out a lot, his willingness to take a walk and to work the count makes us think that he'll end up more along the lines of a patient, high average and high OBP hitter like Lance Berkman, and less like am all-or-nothing wailer like Mike Jacobs.

In his six games since the recall, Snider is posting a 1.121 OPS (.455 OBP, .667 SLG) with two homers, five runs scored and four walks.

And amazingly enough, Snider's managed to escape from the very bottom of the order on a couple of occasions, which gives us a vague sense of hope that Cito Gaston isn't going to stifle his development in the way that he did other significant prospects towards the end of his last tenure in Toronto.

The RR Cool Jay RoY Chase
Ricky Romero had a nice solid outing on Sunday, dropping his ERA to 3.91 for the season. At present, he's posting an identical 11-5 record to fellow Rookie of the Year candidate Jeff Niemann of the Rays, while Niemann has the edge in ERA (3.71) and WHIP (1.30).

In the past month, Romero's walk rate has gone up significantly, pushing his WHIP to 1.40. For RickRo to go over the top of Niemann, he'll need to keep his walks down while hoping for a few disaster starts from his counterpart.

And conveniently enough, the Jays face Niemann and the Rays tonight. If this Blue Jays team has any self-respect, they'll light up the Rays' tall righthander and help their teammate's RoY candidacy that much more.