Hanley Ramirez has emerged as the winner of the NL Rookie of the Year award, narrowly beating the Nationals' Ryan Zimmerman by just 4 points. It was one of the tightest races in the history of the award, highlighted by the presence of three Marlins in the top 4 (Ramirez, Dan Uggla and Josh Johnson). Detroit's Justin Verlander was selected as the AL Rookie of the Year.

Personally, I would have loved to have seen Zimmerman take top honors, but it's hard to argue with the numbers that Ramirez put up this year: Han-Ram (I just made that up!) batted .292 with 46 doubles, 11 triples, 17 home runs, 119 runs scored, 51 stolen bases and 59 RBIs. Whew!

Regardless of who actually went home with the hardware, 2006 will be remembered as a year where there were a number of strong rookies who made their debut, and it will be a pleasure for this fan to watch these players develop!

This post was added on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 9:00 pm and is filed under The Dugout . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.