Ace Wilson Award

## Overview

The **Ace Wilson Award** is an honor given to the best pitcher in each BBL season. It is analogous to Major League Baseball's Cy Young Award. The award is named after Ace Wilson, a custom player from Season 1 whose specialty was pitching and who won the award. The winner gets the Ace Wilson emoji named after them in the Discord server.

## Process

Each coach who participates in the BBL season is allowed to vote for each of the three awards, although they do not have to. On occasion, votes are given to server members who did not participate but have in the past and/or have been following the BBL season closely despite not playing. Each voter is allowed to vote for three players. A first place vote awards three points, a second place vote awards two, and a third place vote is one point. Whichever player gathers the most votes is the winner! In the event of a tie, the two players would share co-Ace Wilson awards, although this has not happen as of Season 8.

## Winners

Record refers to the team's record, whether or not that player pitched in all games. Starting in Season 10, awards were given to each conference rather than leaguewide. They are labeled by first initial for American League, National League, Frontyard League, and Backyard League.

## History

Throughout the seasons, it seems as if the Ace Wilson award rarely goes to a player on a top team. Until Season 10, the best record of any Ace Wilson winner was 8-6. In Season 10, this streak was broken when Frank Thomas of the 11-3 Astros took home the crown in the American League, while Sonja Hagen of the 9-5 Mets won in the National League. The theory may be that teams with worse records play lower scoring games and must therefore have great pitching in order to maximize their run differential, or perhaps that the top teams don't care very much about pitching. Whatever the case, it seems very clear that great pitching is not necessarily correlated to winning.

The strikeouts by Ace Wilson in Season 1, Mr. Clanky in Season 6, and Brad Radke in Season 7 also represent the progression of the single-season strikeout record. Radke's record of 130 strikeouts was challenged in Season 10, being equaled by Sonja Hagen and broken by Amanda Hellerman, who threw 148 strikeouts. However, she did not win the Ace Wilson award, due in large part to a bloated 2.05 ERA.

Tiffany Bosworth became the first two time winner of the award in Season 8. In Season 10, we saw the first two two-time winning coaches, as crazyei8hts and shrewsbury91 each won the award for the second time.

## Criticism

The Ace Wilson Award has received some slight criticism over the years, with two most notable:

* Some people believe that the voters regard strikeouts too heavily when voting, and that a low ERA and low WHIP should be more heavily considered because the pitcher induced weak contact. One striking example of this is in Season 6, when Mr. Clanky (127 K, 1.09 ERA, 0.93 WHIP) beat out Amanda Hellerman (108 K, 0.79 ERA, 0.58 WHIP) and Frank Thomas (112 K, 1.00 ERA, 0.71 WHIP) to win the award. However, supporters of strikeouts claim that strikeouts are a better determination of pitching skill, whereas a low ERA or low WHIP may be due to a strong defense. Stat keeping in the game still penalizes pitchers' ERA and WHIP if the runners reach base and score by defensive errors, so a high ERA and WHIP may therefore be due to a weak defense, and not the pitcher's fault.
* Some coaches believe that AI pitching should also be taken into account, whereas voting now is only based on stats recorded by the user. One major example of this support is for Todd Xavier, who has never won the Ace Wilson award but is regarded as a tough AI pitcher to hit against. However, it may be too difficult to accurately judge AI pitching, as the most times you can face an AI pitcher is twice, and depending on schedules, there will be AI pitchers you never see at all. The AI pitching evidence must therefore come from recordings or streaming, which not everybody provides. Furthermore, the starting pitcher for the AI is sometimes not the starting pitcher used by the human coach. For example, in Season 8, Fernando Diaz of the Monsters finished second in Ace Wilson voting despite Todd Xavier being the Monsters' AI pitcher.

Overall, most coaches agree that voting for the Ace Wilson award is all in good fun, and the criticism has not affected the integrity of the award.