Atlanta Braves Hank Aaron Award : Who Cares?

In an honest attempt to honor new baseball legends, MLB’s rush to add new awards doesn’t exactly live up to the plan.

Prior to game four of the World Series someone will be named the best hitter in each league and presented an award named for Atlanta Braves slugger Hank Aaron. In two weeks will anyone know or even care who won?

On the 25th Anniversary of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record MLB created its first major award in more than thirty years and named it after the Braves slugger. It’s supposed to be awarded to the best hitter in each league but in reality the hitter’s team and personal popularity are as big a factor as his bat.

Can you can name the last Aaron Award winner? Don’t bother looking it up, I’ll put up the list in a bit.

A Brief History of the Award

It would seem an easy thing to do – deciding who was the best hitter in the league each year – but MLB can’t seem to figure it out.

• In 1999 winners were picked objectively. Points were assigned for each hit, home run, and run batted in.
• In 2000 play-by-play broadcasters and color analysts from each club’s radio and television stations voted for three players from each league. First place votes are worth five points, second place votes three points and third place votes one point.
• In 2003 the points were still collected from announcers but fans got to vote on MLB.com  and accounted for 30% vote.
• In 2004 voting became a three-part process. First fans from three players nominated by their team. those 30 players were reduced to six players – three per league –  by a panel put together by MLB and MLB.com and fans then chose the winner by voting online. That lasted through 2006.
• In 2007 and 2008 the teams named their nominee and fans voted online, narrowing the list to five. Fans then voted on the remaining five to determine a winner.
• Since 2009 fans did all the work voting from 1-15 September for one of three nominees from each team and from 16-30 September one American League and one National League winner.

The panel seems to have vanished after 2006, reappeared 2010 – though nowhere does it say what they did or do as according to MLB.com the committee still exists.

"Awarded annually to the best overall offensive performer in both leagues, the award was introduced in 1999 to mark the 25th anniversary of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record. Aaron, along with a panel of other Hall of Famers, determine the winners along with a fan vote."

This was confirmed by Mark Newman in a post on MLB.com.

"For the seventh consecutive year, a special panel of Hall of Fame players, led by Aaron himself, also will vote on the winners . . . Ken Griffey Jr. has been added. . . (that) includes Roberto Alomar, Johnny Bench, Craig Biggio, Eddie Murray and Robin Yount. These Hall of Famers — who combined for 17,010 hits, 8,844 RBIs and 2,275 home runs — have all been personally selected by Aaron . ."

That badly worded compendium of trivia doesn’t say much and a search for the exact duties of the committee and how much their vote counts proved fruitless. I doubt that Aaron did a diligent study and chose the members but that’s typical political spin and should be accepted for that.

My guess looking at the results, the committee was created after 2009 bu doesn’t do mush except give the appearance of oversight. Frankly I don’t care what the committee does and why the heck is there a vote?

It’s 2016 and offensive metrics abound so it’s pretty easy to determine who the best hitter in each league is objectively.