Trout Wins Third Straight Stan Musial Award

Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout swept the balloting on his way to his third successive Stan Musial Award, as selected by members of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. Trout, who had arguably his worst full season in the big leagues, still posted a 7.9 bWAR on his way to leading the Angels to their first playoff appearance since he became part of the team.

Trout won in a rout, capturing all 15 first place votes and beating out his closest competition, Cleveland outfielder Michael Brantley, by 90 points. Only Trout and Brantley were able to cross the 100-point plateau.

In the National League, fresh off winning the Walter Johnson Award (again), Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers took home the Stan Musial hardware as well. Kershaw was the only player in the big leagues to outperform Trout according to bWAR, coming in with an even 8.0.

Kershaw garnered nine of the possible 13 first place votes and beat out the runner-up, 2013 Musial winner Andrew McCutchen, by 23 points.

The complete voting results are as follows (first place votes in parenthesis):

American League

Mike Trout, Los Angeles (15) 195
Michael Brantley, Cleveland 105
Jose Bautista, Toronto 74
Corey Kluber, Cleveland 67
Victor Martinez, Detroit 66
Josh Donaldson, Oakland 65
Jose Abreu, Chicago 51
Felix Hernandez, Seattle 47
Alex Gordon, Kansas City 45
Jose Altuve, Houston 44
Robinson Cano, Seattle 35
Adrian Beltre, Texas 29
Ian Kinsler, Detroit 12
Nelson Cruz, Baltimore 9
Miguel Cabrera, Detroit 8
Adam Jones, Baltimore 7
David Price, Tampa Bay/Detroit 4
Phil Hughes, Minnesota 3
Brian Dozier, Minnesota 2
Jon Lester, Boston/Oakland 2

National League

Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles (9) 151
Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh (4) 128
Giancarlo Stanton, Miami 106
Jonathan Lucroy, Milwaukee 82
Anthony Rendon, Washington 66
Buster Posey, San Francisco 62
Anthony Rizzo, Chicago 32
Yasiel Puig, Los Angeles 25
Johnny Cueto, Cincinnati 16
Adam Wainwright, St. Louis 15
Carlos Gomez, Milwaukee 11
Jason Heyward, Atlanta 11
Jhonny Peralta, St. Louis 10
Jayson Werth, Washington 9
Adrian Gonzalez, Los Angeles 8
Josh Harrison, Pittsburgh 8
Justin Morneau, Colorado 6
Justin Upton, Atlanta 4
Cole Hamels, Philadelphia 2
Todd Frazier, Cincinnati 1
Hunter Pence, San Francisco 1

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 215 blogs spanning most of the 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.

Chapters generally followed one of two methods when casting their ballot. Either representatives of the chapter were given the ballots for voting or a “group ballot” was posted, accounting for both of their votes.

Notably, though the Alliance’s awards come out well before their official counterparts, the BBA selections have matched those of the Baseball Writers of America in many instances over the past five years. This, of course, does not include the Goose Gossage Award that is exclusive to the BBA.

Ballots are posted on the respective blogs and for this award, were tabulated on a 13-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 point scale for first through tenth place. In the interest of transparency, links to the ballots are listed below.

Prior Winners:
2013: Mike Trout, Los Angeles; Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh
2012: Mike Trout, Los Angeles; Buster Posey, San Francisco
2011: Jose Bautista, Toronto; Matt Kemp, Los Angeles
2010: Josh Hamilton, Texas; Joey Votto, Cincinnati
2009: Joe Mauer, Minnesota; Albert Pujols, St. Louis

American League
Boston Red Thoughts
The Tribe Daily
The Flagrant Fan
Misc. Baseball
TribeCards
North Dakota Twins Fan
Subway Squawkers
Victoria HarbourCats Baseball Blog
Seattle Mariners Musings
The Blue Jay Hunter
500 Level Fan