The above article recounts Buster Posey winning of the 2010 National League Rookie of the Year award.
SportsReaction
Giving Buster Posey this award isn’t a disgrace, but it was awarded to the wrong player. It’s clear that the voters got caught up in the San Francisco “hype-machine” at the end of the regular season and got the vote wrong.
San Francisco surpassed the San Diego Padres on the final day of the regular season to win the NL West. Their great play in September and October (19-10 record) garnered all the attention Posey would need to win the award.
The Atlanta Braves, on the other hand, played poorly down the stretch but still made the playoffs. Unfortunately this poor play in September and October (14-16 record) took attention away from them and their more-deserving Rookie of the Year candidate, Jason Heyward.
Not only was Heyward the more productive player between him and Posey, he played in 34 more games than the Giants catcher. While I don’t like to lean on counting stats to rate players, there is one counting stat that is fair to use when making this type of judgment and that is WAR. As you know WAR is an overall measure of wins that a player produced for his team and is adjusted for everything you can think of…and includes defense. While it wouldn’t be fair to say one hitter is better than another because he had more hits—we’d like to look at his batting average or OBP instead--it is fair to look at WAR and say one player contributed more to his team when his is higher.
With that said, have a look at Posey and Heyward’s 2010 seasons:
| Stat | Games | AVG | OBP | SLG | HR | RBI | wOBA | WAR |
| Posey | 108 | 0.305 | 0.357 | 0.505 | 18 | 67 | 0.368 | 3.9 |
| Heyward | 142 | 0.277 | 0.393 | 0.456 | 18 | 72 | 0.376 | 5.0 |
I don’t think more evidence is needed. Not only was Heyward the better hitter (evidenced by his higher wOBA), he contributed 1.1 more wins by being there all season long.
It’s not Posey’s fault he didn’t play a full season, but he shouldn’t have received this award when he only contributed to his teams’ success for a third of the season, while Heyward did it all year long.
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