Two weeks ago I revealed my ballots for the various end of the year awards with the IBWAA. This week the IBWAA is announcing their 2021 award winners!
Check inside to see how the IBWAA voted and the comparisons to my ballot.
Today (well, yesterday) they revealed the AL and NL Reliever of the Year Awards!
IBWAA PRESS RELEASE:
IBWAA SELECTS HADER, HENDRIKS IN 2021 RELIVERS VOTE
The Internet Baseball Writers Association of America (IBWAA) announced the winners of the IBWAA Reliever of the Year Awards winners Friday: Josh Hader of the Milwaukee Brewers and Liam Hendriks of the Chicago White Sox. This is the IBWAA’s 12th annual election for these awards. All IBWAA members were eligible to vote.
Election results are as follows:
AL:
1st Place: Liam Hendriks, Chicago White Sox- 179 points
2nd Place: Raisel Iglesias, Los Angeles Angels- 61 points
3rd Place: Emmanuel Clase, Cleveland- 51 points
NL:
1st Place: Josh Hader, Milwaukee Brewers- 169 points
2nd Place: Mark Melancon, San Diego Padres- 65 points
3rd Place: Kenley Jansen, Los AngelesDodgers- 56 points
The IBWAA endeavors to serve the baseball writing community, representing more than 700 baseball content creators. We strive to increase visibility, networking, and opportunities for all of our members. Voting for full season awards takes place in September of each year, with selections announced in November. The IBWAA also holds Hall of Fame, preseason prediction, and All-Star Game voting.
Association membership is open to any and all Internet baseball writers and content creators. For more information please visit www.ibwaa.com.
How’d I Stack Up?
AND I FINALLY DID IT! I correctly picked the games Top AL and NL Relievers of the Year. I’ll gladly take my place with Trevor Plouffe as oracles among men.
While the official number of voters was not released, we can assume the number of voters for this year. With 9 total points to award (5 for 1st place, 3 for 2nd place, 1 for 3rd place) we can estimate that around 40-60 voters contributed to each of the the AL and/or NL MVP vote. (Unfortunately the full results beyond whoever placed 3rd in each league were not announced.)
I did get 4 of the 6 relievers correct, missing out on Mark Melancon and Emmanuel Clase from my ballots.
For reference, my ballot looked like this:
American League:
1st Place: Liam Hendriks, Chicago White Sox
2nd Place: Raisel Iglesias, Los Angeles Angels
3rd Place: Aroldis Chapman, New York Yankees
National League:
1st Place: Josh Hader, Milwaukee Brewers
2nd Place: Kenley Jansen, Los Angeles Dodgers
3rd Place: Jake McGee, San Francisco Giants
Honestly, there isn’t much to say on this front. I’m kind of surprised the IBWAA decided to end the week yesterday with the reliever vote, but it was the ballots that I did best with from the week as it was the only one I correctly voted for both 1st place finishers.
I look forward to seeing how the BBWAA voted for their awards in a few weeks time!
If you’re interested, click here to find the complete collection for all of my IBWAA award voting for 2021.
