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The Washington Nationals are America’s team in baseball, and in the BBWAA’s votes for MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and Manager of the Year voting, the Nats’ Daniel Murphy took home the silver in the MVP, Max Scherzer took home the gold in the Cy, Trea Turner took home the silver in the ROY, and Dusty Baker took home the bronze in the MOY.
In all, the Nats tied the country of Slovenia who also had the same medal distribution in their 4 medals in the 2016 summer Olympics in Judo (2), Sailing, and Kayak.
Daniel Murphy won the NL’s Outstanding Player of the Year as voted on by his peers, the actual players, who are in the MLBPA, but Murphy only got one first place vote in the MVP from the baseball writers. Murphy was the embodiment of ‘most valuable’ to his team. He just never got the ‘pub’ Kris Bryant received like Bryce Harper before him who was starring in commercials and was front page news.
“That, for me, is the highest praise you can get—to be recognized by your peers,” Murphy said on MLB Network after winning the award.
Mike Puma of the New York Post was the only writer who gave Murphy a first place vote in the MVP. Puma saw Murphy often, and we salute him for going against the popular vote.
In the MVP voting, two other Nationals received votes. Max Scherzer was 10th in the voting and Wilson Ramos was 18th in the voting.
In the Cy Young voting, Tanner Roark was 10th in voting. Roark received a 5th place vote from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s Rob Biertempfel, but DC affiliated voters Todd Dybas of the Washington Times and Mark Zuckerman of MASN did not vote for Roark. Each voted for Scherzer, Bumgarner, Lester, and Hendricks. Dybas cast his remaining vote for Cueto and Zuckerman for Jose Fernandez. Cueto was on 10 ballots and Fernandez on 12 ballots. While there was justification not to vote for Roark, there were many reasons to vote for him as Biertempfel did.
In the Rookie of the Year voting, it was more shocking that Chase Hughes of CSN went with Trevor Story ahead of Trea Turner for 2nd place. Jamal Collier of MLB did pick Trea Turner for 2nd place. In fact, Trea Turner had 11 writers in all pick him for 2nd place. While Story played in 97 games, which was 24 more than Turner, his slash line was lower and he only batted .272 compared to Turner’s .342, but it was Story’s disjointed road splits .235 /.292 /.454 /.747 which kept Trevor Story off many ballots as he did most of his damage playing in the thin air of his home stadium in Colorado.
You have to wonder what some of the DC beat writers were thinking when they voted. We reached out to Kate Upton for her opinion on the voting, and our messages were not returned.
Other notable awards won by Nats were Silver Sluggers for Wilson Ramos as top offensive catcher, and Daniel Murphy for top offensive second baseman. Anthony Rendon was a finalist for the Gold Glove for NL third basemen.
There will be some other awards coming up through the Essurance fan votes.
