BBA Announces Stan Musial Award Winners For 2012

The final award given annually by the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, the Stan Musial Award, is given every year to the premier player in each league.

In what proved to be the easier of the two decisions, the Alliance pulled together to award Buster Posey for his stellar season leading the San Fransisco Giants to an eventual world championship.  Posey had an amazing season for any player, let alone a catcher.  Posey’s hard fought season earned him a batting title, an impressive slashline (.336/.408/.549), 24 home runs and 103 runs batted in.  His impressive numbers earned him 70% of the BBA vote and the acknowledgement as the premier player in the National League.

The American League vote was a bit more of a debate and a fairly close one.  As the blogs weighed in, only two players received votes.  The vote split leaving Mike Trout of the Angels with a decisive 62% of the vote, edging out the Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera.  Mike Trout becomes the first player to be acknowledged by the BBA with the Stan Musial and Willie Mays Awards in the same season.  As impressive as Miguel Cabrera was winning the triple crown, the bloggers of the BBA were quick to point out how impressive Trout’s all around numbers were.

Previous Stan Musial Award Winners
2011: Jose Bautista, Toronto; Matt Kemp, Los Angeles Dodgers
2010: Josh Hamilton, Texas; Joey Votto, Cincinnati
2009: Joe Mauer, Minnesota; Albert Pujols, St. Louis

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of this writing, the organization consists of 232 blogs spanning all 30 major league squads as well as general baseball writing.

The BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into “chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted. The blog chapters that are focused on general baseball were allowed two votes as well, which they could use both on the same league or split between the two leagues.