The report from this morning is now official: the MLB awards going to relievers will be named after Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera. And, as I suspected, setup men need not apply. Get the voting committee for the award:
The voters: Rivera, Hoffman, Dennis Eckersley, Rollie Fingers, Rich “Goose” Gossage, Bruce Sutter, Lee Smith, John Franco and Billy Wagner.
— MLB (@MLB) April 9, 2014
Most of us agree RBI is a flawed stat and thus basing awards on RBI totals is dumb. Well, save totals is a pretty flawed stat too, but I imagine it will be everything when it comes to this award. Closers have a different mentality, you see. Or so we’re told. And so those who save games tend to believe and pride themselves upon.