Lookout Landing hands out some hardware

It's award season for baseball, y'all. We've already seen which gentlemen were selected as the comeback players of the year and which individuals were bestowed with gloves made of gold (a special congratulations to A.J. Pollock, who is one of my favorite non-Mariners). However, the results for the Big Awards (ROY, CYA, and MVP) won't be announced until next week. Before the super official decisions are meted out by the BBWAA, a few of us here at Lookout wanted to share who we thought were most deserving of these accolades. Seven of us participated. The collated results are listed below.

First, the Most Valuable Player awards. (The numbers included in the parentheses next to the WAR values represent the rank of this player, in terms of WAR, in their league. The numbers for the MVP race account for all eligible players, while the numbers for the CYA and ROY account for only pitchers and rookies, respectively.)

The results are split pretty evenly between Donaldson and Trout, but Toronto's third baseman has the edge and takes home the MVP trophy. (Meanwhile, Brett Lawrie had the worst season of his career down in Oakland last year. I'm sorry, A's fans.) If you're a big believer in WAR, Jose Bautista, Miguel Cabrera, and Nelson Cruz (we're all a bunch of homers!) each received a lot more love than they "deserved".

In the NL, results were much less divisive, with Bryce Harper being the clear/unanimous MVP. He was SO GOOD this year. So good. However, this type of cohesive voting was not mirrored in the results for the Cy Young awards.

Here, the Man with the Ugly Beard bests The Man Who Likes to Whine about Mound Conditions on Twitter. The numbers for these fellas are pretty similar. Keuchel has a slight edge in wins and Price has a slight edge in strikeouts. This vote could easily go either way. Also of note, the discrepancy between Sale's fWAR and rWAR is so big!(You can read about these differences here.) Otherwise, none of these votes seem particularly unfounded. It's also nice (and probably unsurprising) that Felix gets a little bit of love.

The NL Cy Young race this year is so dumb. In my opinion, all three of the gentlemen who received first-place votes in the table above had better seasons than either Keuchel or Price, but THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. LL thinks that Arrieta is clearly the most deserving; it'll be interesting to see what the BBWAA decides.

Although I picked Lindor as ROY, I'm a little surprised that Correa didn't get more first place votes. Maybe we just don't like to think about how the Mariners will have the privilege of playing against this kid ~15 times a season for the next six years. Also, the homerism of LL comes through again in the form of Marte getting a couple third place votes. Go M's!

Kris Bryant, with his baseball skillz/shockingly blue eyes, is the runaway winner for NL ROY. He seems very deserving of this award and oh man are the Cubs going to be a good team for the next little while. Also, kudos to Kang for coming over from the KBO and setting the MLB on fire. I really, really hope that he heals up and has a repeat performance next season.

So there you have it. Six awards handed out to six different individuals. These seem like some very reasonable selections, but feel free to chastise our decisions down in the comments. (I reckon there's at least one thing up there that someone will find unbelievable/unforgivable.)

- - -

For all awards, there is a point system that is weighted by the spot on the ballot. For the MVP, a first-place vote is worth 14 points. From second to 10th, the ballot spots are worth 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 points, respectively. For the Cy Young, the points are 7-4-3-2-1. For the Rookie of the Year, the points are 5-3-1.