The First Annual Cardinal Blogger Awards

The votes have been cast. Now let's see who won!

First off, a comment from Kujo at Rockin' the Red for a new title for the group:

How about Cardinals Bloggers United, in the likeness of the soccer hooligan firms in England?

OK, to the awards. I'll post some quotes from those bloggers that elaborated on their selections.

1. Cardinal Pitcher of the Year

It wasn't much of a contest, as Adam Wainwright brought home 6 of the 8 ballots. As Rockin' the Red stated:

In a year that had a revolving door of a 5th rotation spot, Adam brought stability and a glimmer of hope that we weren't wasting our time watching this team after all.

2. Cardinal Player of the Year.

Albert Pujols. You expected something else? AP was a unanimous decision among the eight bloggers. cards4life at Redbird Ramblings stated:

The guy was awesome and put up great numbers even with the bad years that the guys around him in the lineup had....Pools was hands down the player of the year.

As perhaps a representation of how uninspiring and unmemorable this season was, no one game was seen as the defining Game of the Year. In fact, there was a tie between the Ankiel debut (August 9) and the game against Milwaukee that featured Molina's two home runs and Wainwright's seven scoreless innings (August 16). Both of those games received two votes apiece. Back to Kujo:

The fact that he did in his first game back and in Busch Stadium makes it that much more incredible. It's such a rare occurrence to see that I don't know if there will be ever be a moment as unique as that was.

4. Cardinal Rookie of the Year

There wasn't much competition here, so it's not surprising that Brendan Ryan was named on five ballots. Two people selected Ankiel under the "he's a rookie hitter" theory and one selected Ryan Ludwick, who was a rookie to the Cardinals (i.e., in his first year with the team) even though he was not technically a rookie by MLB standards.

5. Surprise of the Year

There were a number of surprises this year, but in our opinion, the biggest one was the departure of Walt Jocketty as Cardinals' GM. Walt was named on three ballots, edging out the third place finish, TLR's return, and two write-in selections, the decision to Braden Looper in the rotation and the death of Josh Hancock.

6. Blog of the Year

Not much of a surprise here. Viva El Birdos received six of the eight votes, dominating the category. And, being that he quoted me, I'll quote cf4l:

as C70 once said, this is LB’s blogosphere and we are just happy to be part of it

7. Surprise Player of the Year

A pretty even split among three players, so even that Ryan Franklin and Rick Ankiel tie for the award with three votes each, while Yadier Molina received two votes. Good things were pretty rare in St. Louis in 2007. Eric at FR stated:

Many wrote off his come back as a hitter as a prolonging of his tragedy. Out of the ashes the phoenix arose, though like I mentioned before, the HGH thing has beclouded a feel good story.

There were a number to choose from here. The Cardinal bloggers, though, select Adam Kennedy as the worst of the bunch. As Kujo put it:

It's not so much that he had a bad year - which he definitely did - but rather it was the fact that he was supposed to complete this offense and horribly failed to do so. Kennedy was, in fact, the least valuable player on the team.

9. New Cardinal of the Year

A lot of the new Cardinals didn't have much of a year (see Kip Wells, Mike Maroth and Adam Kennedy) but Joel Pineiro made an impression on the bloggers, who selected him for this award fairly convincingly. Here was Deaner at CardinalNationGlobe's reasoning:

This was the easiest on the ballot considering the other nominees were Adam Kennedy and Kip Wells. Pineiro compiled a 4.33 ERA, a 7-5 record, with 60 K and 26 BB. In his last 10 games Joel went 6-3 with 3.28 ERA.

10. Most Anticipated Cardinal

No contest. Every single ballot had the same name. Colby Rasmus. As cards4life said:

Its freshing to see a five tool future allstar player developed by the cards minor league system for a change. Its been a while hasn’t it?

In case you want to see how each person voted, here's a handy-dandy chart:

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