We all make mistakes

It’s now officially awards season in Japan, with Monday’s announcements of the Best Nine Awards. There are 19, of course, because the PL gets 10 via the DH. Someone on Twitter asked if I was the one who voted for Orix’s Ho Naito for first base in the PL.

If I had it was unintended, because sometimes I fail to notice inputting the wrong player’s name, and I have made mistakes in the past. I think the person meant it as a compliment but I’m not sure.

One of my Golden Glove mistake votes caused former Yokohama second baseman Yutaka Takagi to write a column about someone who should publicly tarred and feathered for such an absurd vote.

Digression aside, here are the winners with my votes (I did in fact vote as intended for the PL first base award. The MVPs and rookies of the year are announced Tuesday.

I have bolded all the players I voted for and given the vote total for each player in brackets. Every asterisk marks a player who finished within 50 votes of the leading total.

There are two of these for the PL pitcher award, where Kohei Arihara won in what Donald Trump would call a landslide, by 11 votes and 37 percent of the total cast. I have listed all the near misses and the votes they received below each league’s winners, with another note below for the three players I voted for who weren’t even near misses.

Although Yakult shortstop Hideki Nagaoka got the most votes in either league, SoftBank third baseman Ryoya Kurihara was a near unanimous decision, getting 257 of the 259 cast for PL players.