A closer analysis of this year’s AL Rookie of the Year voting breakdown revealed something head-scratching.
On Monday, Major League Baseball announced the Rookie of the Year voting results for the 2024 season. Pittsburgh Pirates phenom Paul Skenes won the award in the NL (leading to a fantastic reaction from him) and New York Yankees righty Luis Gil took home the award in the AL.
The AL vote in particular was very close with Gil beating out Baltimore’s Colton Cowser by a slim 106-101 margin on total points (Gil got 15 first-place votes to Cowser’s 13). But a look under the hood at the full voting results on the BBWAA website uncovered a surprise.
The surprise was that reliever Cade Smith of the Cleveland Guardians got a first-place vote. Mason Miller of the Oakland Athletics also got a first-place vote, but that one at least made more sense since he was an AL All-Star this season on the strength of a 28-save, 104-strikeout season for the 69-win A’s. No other AL players besides Gil and Cowser received any first-place votes.
Smith, a 25-year-old righty, certainly did well on his own merits this past season, going 6-1 with a 1.91 ERA, a 0.90 WHIP, and 103 strikeouts in 74 appearances for Cleveland. But Smith is still a largely unknown player who was pitching more so in middle relief for the Guardians in 2024 rather than in the later innings.
The BBWAA site revealed that the voter in question was Evan Woodberry of MLive, who also gave Cowser a second-place vote. Thus, his decision to go rogue and vote Smith for first place at least did not end up costing Cowser the Rookie of the Year award in a race as narrow as that one was. But still, Woodberry made Smith into the latest MLB pitcher to get a very unlikely first-place award vote.
