FanSided MLB 2012 Awards: NL Rookie of the Year: Bryce Harper

For many fans, the end-of-season player awards are one of the biggest highlights of the long MLB offseason. There’s just one problem: the most deserving players don’t always win. Though the BBWAA generally does a better job with the MVP and the Cy Young than with, say, the Hall of Fame, their picks for the coveted hardware are often questionable, if not dumbfounding.

So at FanSided, we decided to put our money where our collective mouth is. At the end of the 2012 MLB season, 52 FanSided writers representing 28 different sites from around the MLB network cast their ballots for Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, Manager of the Year, and Rookie of the Year.

Yesterday, we unveiled the results of our first award: the American League Rookie of the Year. Today, we turn our attention to the National League.

A couple notes on the voting: Balloting opened on October 1 (when each team had three games left to play) and closed on October 5 before the first playoff game stared. Each voter named three players on his or her ballot, with votes scored on a 5-3-1 basis.

Without further ado, here are the results:

Bryce Harper takes home the hardware with 178 out of a maximum possible 255 points while Wade Miley finishes a close second. Todd Frazier takes home the bronze, while Norichika Aoki and Wilin Rosario round out the top five. Beyond the frontrunners, Anthony Rizzo, Andrelton Simmons, Zack Cozart, Yonder Alonso, Yasmani Grandal, Matt Carpenter, Lance Lynn, and Jordan Pacheco also earned some support.

Harper had a slim majority as the first-place pick, earning 28 first-place votes and appearing on 44 ballots (out of 51). Miley got 14 first-place votes, Frazier earned six, Rosario received two, and Simmons got one (interestingly, that was the only vote he got).

What do you think? Did we make the right choice?