(11-15) 11:16 PST -- Giants catcher
Buster Posey now has a pretty trophy to place next to his World Series championship ring. The inscription will read, "
National League Rookie of the Year."
Despite playing only two-thirds of the season in the majors, Posey handily defeated Atlanta right fielder
Jason Heyward in balloting by 32 members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Posey earned 20 first-place votes on ballots in which writers ranked their three top choices. Heyward won nine first-place votes. One went to third-place finisher Jaime Garcia of St. Louis and two to Florida's Gaby Sanchez.
No rookie appeared on all 32 ballots. Posey and Heyward each appeared on 31, which means one writer for each player believed there were three better NL rookies in 2010.
Writers submitted their ballots before the postseason began.
Posey became the sixth Giant and first in 35 years to win the award since it was established in 1947. He joined
Willie Mays (1951),
Orlando Cepeda (1958),
Willie McCovey (1959), Gary Matthews (1973) and John Montefusco (1975).
Posey spent almost two months at Triple-A Fresno before he was promoted to play first base and inject life into a struggling offense.
He hit .305 with 18 homers and 67 RBIs, reached base 35.7 percent of the time and slugged .505, doing most of his damage after
the Giants traded
Bengie Molina to Texas on July 1 and installed Posey as the everyday catcher.
He had an immediate impact, hitting .417 with a 1.165 OPS in July to win
National League Player of the Month. The team won 20 of 28 games in July. Posey had a 21-game hitting streak that month.
Heyward had a more immediate impact I 2010. He hit a three-run homer against Chicago's
Carlos Zambrano in his first big-league at-bat April 5, leading the Braves to an Opening Day victory.
That shot, coupled with the hype that followed him to the majors, made Heyward the instant favorite for Rookie of the Year. He came to the plate 623 times, hit .277 with 18 homers and 72 RBIs and had a much better on-base percentage (.393) than Posey.
That Heyward played a full season with the Braves might have swayed some voters, though sentiment among the press shifted toward Posey toward the end of the year. Many influential national voices, particularly those who write for popular Internet sites, argued that Posey deserved a heap of credit for catching one of the majors' best pitching staffs.
Posey's defense, cited by the Giants as the reason he needed more time in the minors, became a strength, and the staff praised his work repeatedly down the stretch and during the postseason.
E-mail Henry Schulman at
[email protected].
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/15/SPNM1GCC6I.DTL#ixzz15NyV0vSi
