Kirby Yates of the Padres and Liam Hendriks of the Athletics are winners of this year’s reliever of the year awards as voted on by the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America (IBWAA).
Box-Toppers Relievers of the Year ballot
Here are Box-Toppers' ballot selections for the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America (IBWAA) 2019 Reliever of the Year awards. The ballot required voters to pick the top three relief pitchers in each league.Players are shown with their team and their Box-Toppers point (BTP) total for 2019.
| AL Reliever of the Year | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Brad Hand | Indians | 8.0 |
| 2 | Taylor Rogers | Twins | 7.0 |
| 3 | Liam Hendriks | Athletics | 7.0 |
| NL Reliever of the Year | |||
| Player | Team | BTP | |
| 1 | Josh Hader | Brewers | 17.7 |
| 2 | Felipe Vazquez | Pirates | 8.7 |
| 3 | Luke Jackson | Braves | 8.0 |
Yates wins the 2019 IBWAA Hoyt Wilhelm National League Relief Pitcher of the Year Award and Hendricks wins the 2019 IBWAA Rollie Fingers American League Relief Pitcher of the Year. The awards were announced Sunday.
As a member of the IBWAA, I cast a ballot in the group’s postseason awards and use the Box-Toppers statistics shared here as a guide. This year, I voted as relievers of the year Josh Hader of the Brewers in the NL and Brad Hand of the Indians in the AL.
Hader finished second among NL relievers in IBWAA voting. Hand did not place among the top three AL relievers in IBWAA voting.
On the other hand, Yates, voted IBWAA’s NL top reliever, did not appear on Box-Toppers’ ballot as one of the top three. In fact, he was left off only 23 of the 120 IBWAA ballots cast. Yates received 97 first place votes (80.83 percent) and was named on 92.13 percent of the ballots. Yates had 7.0 Box-Toppers points in 2019 and ranked fourth among NL relief pitchers, just 1.0 Box-Toppers point short of making the top three.
The AL winner, Hendricks, ranked third in Box-Toppers points among AL relief pitchers with 7.0, 1.0 point behind the leader, Hand (8.0).
Hader of the Brewers, meanwhile, had one of the best seasons in the past 20 years for a reliever as measured by Box-Toppers.
Hader had more than twice as many Box-Toppers points as any other relief pitcher in baseball (17.7). His total is the third-highest single-season total for a closing pitcher since Box-Toppers started separately tracking relievers in 1998. The only other player who earned more points in a season as a closer is Eric Gagne of the Dodgers, who did it twice (19.7 points in 2004 and 19.0 points in 2003).
Earlier in the season, Hader seemed poised to shatter Gagne’s “all-time” record. On June 27, he reached 14.7 Box-Toppers points before the season’s halfway point and was on pace to earn 29.4 for the season. But Hader only earned 3.0 points the rest of the season and finished trailing Gagne’s record by 2.0 points.
Though Hader trailed Yates in saves (37 vs. 41), Hader, especially early in the year, pitched in many high-pressure situations, often for more than an inning at a time and sometimes in middle relief rather than the traditional closing inning. While Yates did have 7.0 Box-Toppers points in the season, Hader had more than double that in just the first half of the season as he frequently was the Brewers’ key player, who most contributed to their wins.
Hader ranked ahead of second-place Felipe Vazquez of the Pirates (8.7), who was placed on leave by Major League Baseball in mid-September after being charged in connection with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl.
The IBWAA relief pitcher awards were established in 2010. Election results are as follows:
NL relief pitcher
1st—Kirby Yates, San Diego Padres – 537 points
2nd—Josh Hader, Milwaukee Brewers – 250
3rd—Will Smith, San Francisco Giants – 106 (Smith had 5.0 Box-Toppers points, eighth among NL closing pitchers).
AL relief pitcher
1st—Liam Hendriks, Oakland Athletics – 371 points
2nd—Aroldis Chapman, New York Yankees – 253 (Chapman had 3.0 Box-Toppers points, 12th among AL closers.)
3rd—Roberto Osuna, Houston Astros – 144 (Osuna had 4.0 Box-Toppers points, ninth among AL closers).
About Box-Toppers—Box-Toppers tracks who most helps their team win the most games. Using standard box score statistics, Box-Toppers uses a simple formula to determine a Player of the Game for each Major League Baseball game played. That player is the person who contributed most to his team’s win. In regular season games, players earn 1.0 Box-Toppers point for being named Player of the Game and can earn bonus points for being Player of the Day or top player or batter in their league for the day.
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