MLB Roundup 11/12: Álvarez and Alonso win Rookie of the Year awards

Rookie of the Year Awards handed out

This week is BBWAA award week, and the festivities got started on Monday with the Rookie of the Year awards. There wasn’t a whole lot of suspense here, with the winners being fairly obvious on both sides. In fact, the only real bit of suspense was whether or not they would both win unanimously. On the American League side, Yordan Álvarez of the Astros did indeed take it unanimously. The 22-year-old had one of the best rookie seasons in recent memory and was able to run away with this one despite playing in only 87 games. On the year Álvarez ended up hitting .313/.412/.655 for a 178 wRC+, the second-best mark in baseball among those with at least 300 plate appearances. John Means of the Orioles finished second while Brandon Lowe of the Rays finished third.

In the senior circuit, Pete Alonso of the Mets was the easy favorite and did indeed end up taking the award. Unlike Álvarez, however, New York’s first baseman didn’t get all of the votes. Instead, he took 29 of the 30 first place votes. It was a big year for Alonso, who finished his age-24 season hitting .260/.358/.583 for a 143 wRC+. His 53 home runs also led of all of baseball and he took home the Home Run Derby trophy in the summer as well. Mike Soroka of the Braves grabbed the other first place vote and finished second while Fernando Tatís Jr. finished third.

Sox Spin: The Red Sox didn’t have any players receive votes this year, which wasn’t a major surprise. For the first half of the year it looked like Michael Chavis was a shoo-in to at least earn some down-ballot votes if not win the whole thing. Injury and slumps changed that pretty quickly, though. All in all it was still a mostly encouraging year for the Red Sox rookie, but he certainly didn’t deserve to be a top three consideration.