The Hank Aaron Award is the youngest award MLB hands out, and while not totally useless it could be done a bit better. It’s meant to go to the “most outstanding offensive player” in each league–whatever that means exactly. I would have no problem with an award that is given to the top homerun hitter in each league. In fact, it sort of makes sense that the Hank Aaron award would be for the biggest slugger in each league. If you made a Tony Gwynn or Ted Williams award, you’d give those out to the batting champions for each league, right? Going beyond this, they instated the award for the 20th anniversary of Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record.
The first year it was given out, the Hank Aaron awards were determined by using magical objective formula based on some combination of homeruns and hits. In 2000 they changed the ballot system so that–get this–it was voted on by each team’s TV and radio play-by-play guys and color analysts. That’s right, it means that Michael Kay, Buck Martinez, John Sterling and Hawk Harrelson vote on the award. If that wasn’t bad enough in 2003 they changed the ballot system again and this time the fans get to vote and their vote counts for 30% of the total tally, with the TV and radio guys accounting for 70%.
What’s the point of an award that is given out in such a random fashion?
Getting down to it–and getting past the bizarre selection system–it really does swing towards the guys who lead (or were very close) to the top of the league in homeruns:
| Year | AL Winner | AL Homerun Leader |
NL Winner | NL Homerun Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Manny Ramirez | Ken Griffey Jr | Sammy Sosa | Mark McGuire |
| 2000 | Carlos Delgado | Troy Glaus | Todd Helton | Sammy Sosa |
| 2001 | Alex Rodriguez | Alex Rodriguez | Barry Bonds | Barry Bonds |
| 2002 | Alex Rodriguez | Alex Rodriguez | Barry Bonds | Barry Bonds |
| 2003 | Alex Rodriguez | Alex Rodriguez | Albert Pujols | Jim Thome |
| 2004 | Manny Ramirez | Manny Ramirez | Barry Bonds | Adrian Beltre |
| 2005 | David Ortiz | Alex Rodriguez | Andruw Jones | Andruw Jones |
| 2006 | Derek Jeter | David Ortiz | Ryan Howard | Ryan Howard |
| 2007 | Alex Rodriguez | Alex Rodriguez | Prince Fielder | Prince Fielder |
| 2008 | Kevin Youkilis | Miguel Cabrera | Aramis Ramirez | Ryan Howard |
So if it weren’t an award for the "most outstanding offensive player" with no critera beyond that given, and instead an automatic stats based award you wouldn’t see that much difference regarding the winners anyway. 2008 stands out as being very different from the rest (Aramis Ramirez? Fans and sportscasters are both crazy I guess) and if MLB doesn’t want it to turn into a complete joke instead of the mild joke it currently is they should probably take a look at changing things. Or at least taking Hank Aaron’s name off of it until they figure out a better way of honoring him.
If MLB’s concern is that a stat based award takes away the specialness of winning an award, or that it would be hard to find a sponsor because there’s no surprise, that is easily solvable by giving it a nice ceremony instead of giving the guys a big TV on the field before the game and having Joe Buck mention it during the broadcast.
