Throughout the 2017 Major League Baseball regular season there were many standout rookies, as there are in most seasons, all gunning to win their league’s Rookie of the Year Award.
Yet, in 2017 it seemed almost right from the beginning no rookies stood out the way New York Yankees’ new right fielder Aaron Judge and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ new first baseman Cody Bellinger did. The pair appeared to be “locks” to win the American League Rookie of the Year Award and National League Rookie of the Year Award, respectively.
The only real question was would they be able to do so unanimously earning 150 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America?
By the season’s end, it seemed that the pair had a very good chance of accomplishing what had only been done three times before since the Rookie of the Year Award had been given out in both leagues by the BBWAA, starting in 1949.
On Monday, Judge and Bellinger were unanimously voted by the BBWAA as the AL and NL Rookies of the Year, joining a very selective group of former rookies that includes a current member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
While neither Judge nor Bellinger had much competition, if any at all, getting 150 first-place votes from the BBWAA is virtually unheard of. In fact, it was just the fourth time that each recipient of the award received 100 percent of first-place votes.