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Voting for the award is done by combination of fan voting and an expert panel. Through October 10, fans will have the opportunity to select one AL and one NL winner from a list comprising of one finalist per Club, online at MLB.com and the 30 Club sites. The Hall of Fame panel is led by Hank Aaron, and includes Hall of Famers Roberto Alomar, Tony Gwynn, Paul Molitor, Eddie Murray and Robin Yount, who will lend their expertise to select the best offensive performer in each League [and hopefully counter the rampant homerism we'll see in the fan voting!] The winners of the 2013 Hank Aaron Award will be announced during the 2013 World Series.
Goldschmidt, 26, hit .302 with 36 doubles, 36 home runs and 125 RBI in 160 games with the D-backs this season. The NL All-Star became the first player in club history to lead or tie for the league lead in home runs and RBI, while also ranking first in slugging percentage (.551), OPS (.952), extra-base hits (75) and total bases (332). I think he probably has a better shot at winning this than the MVP, but the "fan vote" portion does bother me - not clear what percentage of that is in the final decision, or if it's merely "advisory". McCutchen, Votto and Goldschmidt are all pretty close at the top, but if was purely the fans, it would probably go to Carpenter....
The finalists for the 2013 Hank Aaron Award are as follows. Got to feel for certain teams on the list, who didn't have a Goldschmidt on their offense this season!
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American League |
National League |
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Chris Davis |
Paul Goldschmidt |
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David Ortiz |
Freddie Freeman |
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Alexei Ramirez |
Nate Schierholtz |
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Jason Kipnis |
Jay Bruce |
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Miguel Cabrera |
Michael Cuddyer |
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Jason Castro |
Hanley Ramirez |
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Eric Hosmer |
Giancarlo Stanton |
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LA Angels of Anaheim |
Mike Trout |
Carlos Gomez |
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Joe Mauer |
David Wright |
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Robinson Cano |
Domonic Brown |
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Josh Donaldson |
Andrew McCutchen |
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Kendrys Morales |
Matt Carpenter |
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Evan Longoria |
Will Venable |
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Adrian Beltre |
Hunter Pence |
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Edwin Encarnacion |
Jayson Werth |
The Hank Aaron Award was introduced in 1999 to honor the 25th Anniversary of Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's home run record, and, was the first major award introduced by Major League Baseball in more than 25 years. "It is a great honor that Major League Baseball recognizes the most outstanding offensive performer in each League with an award in my name," said Hank Aaron. Admittedly, he probably would rather they hadn't honored certain players in his name - the award started just as the steroid era was getting going. Previous winners pretty much form a Who's Who of PED abusers including: Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. Ouch.