The real 2003 individual awards - the ones voted on by all the fans, not some small group of ancient writers - have been announced. These are the 2003 Internet Baseball Awards.
Despite requiring that people register with Baseball Prospectus in order to vote (BOOOOOOOO...), the IBAs still drew over 1,600 voters this year, once again giving a good cross-section of MLB's hard-core fandom around the world. None of the votes was a tremendous surprise, and only one was really close, but as always the fans have done a far better job than we will see from any other source this year. It goes to show you... you can get some pretty stifling groupthink from 30 writers, or from ten guys around a table deciding the Sporting News awards or whatever, but it's awfully hard to poll 1,600 people and claim you didn't get a fair shot.
The winners:
AL Most Valuable Player Alex Rodriguez
AL Cy Young Award Roy Halladay
AL Rookie of the Year Angel Berroa
AL Manager of the Year Tony Peņa
NL Most Valuable Player Barry Bonds
NL Cy Young Award Mark Prior
NL Rookie of the Year Brandon Webb
NL Manager of the Year Jack McKeon
A number of Blue Jays appeared in the voting... Carlos Delgado finished 2nd in the AL MVP race, with Roy Halladay finishing 10th and Vernon Wells 13th. First-half Jay Shannon Stewart was 17th. Meanwhile, Cory Lidle (in 62nd place) appears to have got a couple of Bizarro World votes. Kelvim Escobar finished 85th and Greg Myers 96th.
In the AL Cy Young race, Roy Halladay was the well-deserved winner, with 746 first-place votes to 392 for Pedro Martinez. A wag appears to have marked his ballot for Kelvim Escobar, Aquilino Lopez, Jason Kershner, Trever Miller, and Cliff Politte.
Two Jays finished well in the AL Rookie of the Year voting, as Reed Johnson and Aquilino Lopez finished 9th and 10th respectively. Jason Kershner even appeared on three ballots, while someone in Mark Hendrickson's family appears to have voted as well - even his mother could put him no higher than third, though.
Finally, Carlos Tosca came 7th in AL Manager of the Year balloting, appearing on 239 ballots.
Warm Batter's Box ongratulations to all the winners, especially Roy Halladay.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20031024031145999