The Rockies got hosed in the awards voting again

The Colorado Rockies had the kind of season that should be catnip to the BBWAA members who vote on baseball’s year-end awards. They went from rebuilding to contending, and they punched their way through to the playoffs for the first time in nine seasons.

They had help from expected and surprising sources. Two of their position players finished in the top 10 in wins above replacement according to both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference, and depending on which metric you use, the difference between those players and the leaders are negligible, at best.

Neither Nolan Arenado nor Charlie Blackmon were among the three finalists for National League MVP in 2017.

If you subscribe to the idea that there isn’t a real, tangible difference between 6.7 WAR and 6.9 — which you should, considering how debatable the metrics are when it comes from defense, baserunning, park effects, and positional adjustment — you might consider this a slight. It mostly looks like a case of too many fine candidates, with at least eight or nine completely deserving winners before you even look at the pitchers.

But you know that Coors Field had something to do with it. When matching up the 37 homers hit by Blackmon and Arenado against the 36 hit by Paul Goldschmidt, it’s easy for a voter to dismiss the first two because of their home park. Blackmon was a .276/.337/.447 hitter away from Coors, and that was used as evidence against him, as if most hitters don’t hit better at home, as if just anyone could hit .391/.466/.773 at Coors Field, and as if that last line didn’t help the Rockies tremendously. As if hitting for a 1239 OPS at home isn’t valuable compared to his peers.

It’s a crowded field, though. I get it. Can’t vote for everyone, and I’m sure there were a couple first-place votes for Blackmon and Arenado mixed in.

This brings us to the Rookie of the Year vote, however.

Cody Bellinger is going to win, and everyone else is scrapping for second place. We’ve expected that, so on the Tragedy Scale, this ranks at a 1.1 out of 10, just ahead of someone putting ketchup on a Chicago hot dog. We’ll get over this. But the Rockies’ young pitchers got hosed. Here are the three finalists:

It’s possible to use FanGraphs’ WAR to exclude both of the Rockies’ rookie starters, German Marquez and Kyle Freeland, from a list of the top three NL rookies, but that’s only because Austin Barnes (2.5 fWAR) barely eclipsed Marquez (2.4). And if you’re using .1 WAR as a way to rank a hitter above a pitcher, you need to put the stats down and take a little walk. At least one of the Rockies’ rookie pitchers should have been considered for second or third place.

Again, these slights aren’t a huge deal. There are a lot of NL players who are deserving of the MVP. The race for Rookie of the Year was over in July or so. There are reasons to rage at the world, and the Rockies’ players not getting a shiny MVP-2 or ROY-3 next to their season line on Baseball-Reference isn’t one of them.

But it’s the perfect example of the voters having it both ways. Charlie Blackmon hit .331? Ha ha, yeah, that’s Coors for you. Freeland posted a 4.10 ERA? Hey, nice start, kid, but we’re going to need to see more from you.

If anything, it’s much easier to forgive the MVP vote. Lotta candidates, two players from the same team splitting votes, et cetera. It’s not so much that Coors Field is hosing them as it is Giancarlo Stanton hitting all of the home runs and Joey Votto’s .999 OBP.

The lack of enthusiasm for the Rockies’ rookies is baffling. Do you know the depths of organization hell they’ve been to? They’ve moved their minor league affiliates to higher altitudes. They’ve installed a humidor. They’ve focused on the sinker. They’ve focused on the fastball. They had a weird stretch where they decided that letting the opposing hitters put the ball in play was going to work. They experimented with piggyback starters and a four-man rotation. They focused on relievers. They’ve spent on outside free agents. They’ve used their high draft picks on starting pitchers. They’ve ...

More recently the front office and training staff discussed converting the entire home clubhouse at Coors Field into a hyperbaric chamber to help players recover in an environment where there’s a lack of oxygen.

Yeah, that. What this awards season should be, then, is an appreciation that the Rockies are onto something. They built their team around young pitching, and it worked. They made the postseason. They were just 12 wins away from a championship. This doesn’t mean it’ll work next year, but, dammit, how about a round of applause for the young pitchers who put their head into the jaws of Coors Field and took it right back out while everybody in the tent applauded?

Here’s a list of the Rockies pitchers who have finished with award votes:

The point isn’t to suggest that the Rockies have been spitting out deserving award-winners for decades, only to get shafted, but that when they have pitchers who rate at all, we should pay attention. When Francis finished sixth in the 2005 ROY voting, it was because three voters said, “HEY, I know this guy had a 5.68 ERA, but 14-12 at Coors Field is pretty impressive, no?” It was bad logic, but the idea of giving extra credit to a Rockies pitcher was in the right spot, at least.

Cross-reference the above list of vote-getters and this list of the best Rockies seasons by WAR. The point isn’t that most of those guys were deserving winners. But that it’s apparently hard to pitch at Coors Field, and when two rookies do it with aplomb, maybe it’s a good time to pay more attention.

One of these years, a Rockies hitter will hit enough to make people ignore the park adjustments, like Larry Walker in 1997. One of these years, a Rockies pitcher will have numbers that are so good, it will be natural to append an “and they pitched half their games at Coors Field!”

This is not one of those years. This is the Rockies hitters getting dinged for the help they get from Coors Field, and this is the Rockies pitchers getting dinged because nobody remembers the hurt they get from Coors Field. There’s something extremely off about the whole thing.