It's a bit of an anti-climactic finish for us American League fans, but the SBN Baseball Awards conclude today with the announcement of our National League MVP: Matt Kemp!

As with Jose Bautista, Matt Kemp's selection shouldn't be terribly surprising. One homer away from the all-exclusive 40-40 club, Kemp's return to (and rise above) form mirrors that of Jacoby Ellsbury. One year removed from a terribly disappointing season, Kemp came out on fire and never really looked back. A line of .324/.399/.586 was only minimally damaged by Kemp's defense--fringe-average as usual, but not disastrous as last year. It may not have been a very good year for the Dodgers, but they were certainly reminded that they do, in fact, have a franchise star in Kemp.

Otherwise, it seems like a fairly unremarkable ballot (which is, in itself, a bit remarkable given how these things tend to go). The important names are all up there, with the pitchers taking their usual significant (if perhaps undeserved) hit for not playing every game. Braun and Kemp are nigh-indistinguishable at the top, but when it comes down to it only one could reasonably leave with the award. If this is how the dice fall next week, then there should be few complaints all-around.

Sorry, Red Sox fans, but three legitimate MVP candidates just wasn't enough to overcome the awesome that is Jose Bautista. Jacoby Ellsbury came very, very close, but he was the only one, as Dustin Pedroia finished sixth, while Adrian Gonzalez's highest vote was a fifth-place one.

Personally, I voted for Ellsbury as MVP, but my own ballot doesn't look very different from the actual top 10 results. It was a tight race, and either Ellsbury or Bautista were fine choices for the virtual hardware. 

My favorite part of this might actually be that 26 different players received votes from 24 writers. The 2011 season had some pretty memorable campaigns from many players, and it's crazy to think that two points total for someone like James Shields feels both accurate and like nowhere near enough. It was very clear, though, looking at the distribution of first- and second-place votes, who the favorites were among SB Nation's American League bloggers, though.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a tie! With 149 points each, Clayton Kershaw and Roy Halladay will each take home a share of our National League Cy Young Award.

Interestingly, the leader in xFIP in Cliff Lee comes in third by a rather wide gap, but it's easy to see how that could develop given how the votes were distributed (an astounding 75% of voters had him marked at third). Meanwhile, Halladay and Kershaw split the rest of the vote in two, and it's easy to understand why. Each dominated the league with a 2.35 and 2.28 ERA respectively, and did so largely on their own merits. Kershaw was amongst the league's best at striking batters out with 9.57 per nine innings, while Halladay did his usual thing mixing a strong K-rate with an unreasonably low walk rate. Allowing just 1.35 per nine, the Philadelphia ace was the best in the league at avoiding the free pass.

The Cy Young Award has only once before ended in a tie, with Mike Cuellar and Denny McClain taking home the American League honors in 1969. It will be interesting to see if that plays out again; these two men will certainly be hard to separate either way.

I have to tell you, it's a bit of a shock that the pitcher who led the American League in innings, wins, ERA, strikeouts, ERA+, WHIP, games started, wins above replacement -- really, in everything old-school, new-school, and in between -- would take home the award for best pitcher. When you can put together a season that satisfies the progressive and the conservative, the nerd and the the Murray Chass, well, then you've got yourself a good chance of taking home hardware.

This was a decisive victory, too, as Verlander collected all but two first-place votes out of 24 cast, and earned second-place honors on those two ballots:

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It's time for the least fulfilling part of everyone's offseason: awards! For the teams that had good years, it's an unnecessary feather in the cap, and for those without, cold comfort over a long five months.

That being said, they're also a source of some great controversy, since the people who actually vote for them don't have the most consistent of track records. Justin Morneau in 2006? Really?

With that in mind, we here at SB Nation have done what is becoming our usual thing and voted ourselves. Over this coming week, we'll be revealing our choices for the best of the year, starting with the Rookie of the Year awards for both leagues.

American League Rookie of the Year: Michael Pineda -- RHP, Seattle Mariners

Seattle's flamethrowing wunderkind gets us started off on a pretty good foot. Putting up a 3.74 ERA with even better peripherals, Pineda has outshone the super-lucky Hellickson and KC first baseman Eric Hosmer. 

The selection of Pineda is fine by me, but what's curious is the rest of the voting...

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UPDATE: Josh Hamilton finishes first, as predicted. And Adrian Beltre finishes ninth because, uh, defense doesn't matter or something.

Wait, then why did Longoria get so many points? And Crawford?

Oh...right...the errors. Oh well, at least they're getting better at this sort of thing.

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The MLB is about to finish giving out its awards today by naming the American League MVP. And while the Red Sox have at least one player on the short list (Adrian Beltre), this one seems like a foregone conclusion. Who's the likely winner? Josh Hamilton. And SB Nation definitely agrees.

Beltre comes up a little short compared to his second place WAR finish, but oh well. Hamilton ran away with this one, and deserved it.

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Every year, SB Nation likes to poll the collective baseball writers and figure out our own winners of the major awards. For those wondering, Jason Heyward and Austin Jackson won close votes in the rookie of the year competitions (only three points separated Jackson and Neftali Feliz), but since there were no Red Sox even close to those votes, I figured we'd just skip ahead to the Cy Young winners.

The winner was, by a very long shot, Felix Hernandez, and it's no surprise to me. King Felix had the best combination of peripherals and results by far, recording the league's best ERA and third best xFIP. The wins weren't there, no, but come on. That's not actually a pitcher's results.

Full votes follow the jump:

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Just like us bloggers did for the end-of-the-year baseball awards, the baseball community leaders voted for the baseball Hall of Fame as well -- a first for the network. Here are the results:

For more reaction the results, click the "read more" link below.

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