troy for ROY

over the next few days we'll be announcing the results of the 2d annual SB Nation baseball awards. same rules as last year: each blogger gets one ballot and votes only for the league his/her team plays in; in addition, one non-SB Nation blogger for each team gets a ballot (erik manning of Future Redbirds, in the cards' instance). apparently not everybody exercised their right to vote, because there were only 40 ballots cast (out of a possible 60) in the rookie-of-year polling, which is posted herewith. a 1st-place vote is worth 5 points, a 2d is good for 3, and a 3d is worth 1. the tallies:

my ballot went 1. tulo 2. braun 3. pence. it was hard not to list braun #1, given his pujolsian rate stats (.324 / .370 / .634), but in the end i deemed him too one-dimensional --- an elite slugger, but one of the worst fielders in the league at any position. he also spent the first two months of the year in the minors, which was largely his own fault (the brewers didn't trust his glove enough to make him their opening day 3d baseman). pence, too, had better rate stats than tulo but missed 2 months of playing time (one on the dl, one in the minors). i voted for tulo as much for his glove as his bat; he played gold-glove D at the most important position on the field while contributing well above-average offense. like most rockies, tulowitzki had a sharp home / road batting split; he was not nearly as impressive with the bat as braun or pence. but he also was the only one of the three who got better as the year went on; he raised his slugging avg 100 points in the 2d half, while the other two saw their numbers slide as the league adjusted to them. i thought tulo had the most complete year of any nl rookie, contributing at a high level from wire to wire, in both halves of the inning. according to VORP, tulo was 19 runs less valuable than braun at the plate; he almost certainly was 19 runs more valuable in the field.

i don't mean to denigrate braun; he had one of the most eye-catching rookie seasons in recent memory and is a very deserving winner. indeed, he and pence would be slam-dunk winners in nearly any other season, and chris young would have made a deserving honoree in most years. 2007 was an incredible year for rookies in the nl.

here's a numerical comparison of the top 3:

we'll announce manager-of-year awards tomorrow, cy youngs wednesday, and the mvps on thursday and friday. a few more odds and ends:

• david pinto has begun revealing 2007 results for his fielding metric, PMR (probabilistic model of range). yesterday he posted the team-by-team results; the cardinals ranked 21st. per this model, they only made 5 plays fewer than an average fielding team would be predicted to make, which translates into 3 or 4 runs; ie, the model doesn't think the cards' lax D in 2007 was particularly costly. but it was still costly in the sense that defense has long been one of the cards' core strengths; it was a weakness last year. the cardinals ranked #1 in team PMR in 2006; in 2005 they ranked 6th, and the year pinto created this metric (2004) they ranked 1st. we don't need PMR to tell us the defense was significantly worse last season --- most of us has noticed it after a month's worth of games --- but this objective model confirms our subjective impressions and adds a sense of proportion to them. it was a serious collapse.

• sounds like the marlins are pretty serious about trading miguel cabrera. he's entering his 2d year of arb eligibility, meaning he can be a free agent after the 2009 season. any team that wants him for the next 2 years will have to be prepared to give up a package similar to what boston offered for josh beckett two years ago (hanley ramirez, anibel sanchez, and a couple of throw-ins); the cardinals would probably have to offer rasmus + anderson + mark hamilton, and even that might not be enough. if they were better positioned for a run at a championship in 2008 or 2009, i could imagine contemplating that trade, but given the team's current state it don't make no sense. no matter how many runs a cabrera+pujols-powered lineup might score (and it'd be a whole lot), they still probably wouldn't lift the team out of mediocrity this year --- not with all the other deficiencies facing the cardinals (pitching, defense, speed). and after 2009, you lose cabrera to free agency. the odds are against colby rasmus' having even one year as good as cabrera's typical season; nonetheless, rasmus is far more likely to be part of a st louis championship team between 2009 and 2014 than miggy would be in 2008 or 2009.

• yesterday at Baseball Prospectus, john perrotto offered another angle on chris antonetti's pullout: "Cleveland assistant GM Chris Antonetti pulled his name from consideration and parlayed the Cardinals' interest into a contract extension with a sizeable raise from the Indians. . . . Those who know Antonetti insist the only two GM jobs that interest him are the Indians and Washington." in other words, antonetti was never truly serious about the cardinals; he was merely using them for leverage all along. if true, that doesn't make him a bad person; he played that one well (and exhibited the skills that make him such a great gm candidate in the first place). BP has excellent access to the cleveland front office, which employs a former BP writer (keith woolner). perrotto adds, "[R]eports that he has been promised to eventually replace GM Mark Shapiro are inaccurate."