Elvis Andrus swats his first major league hit against the Indians on Monday, April 6th.It was, in the grand scheme of things, a surprisingly successful season, rehabilitative to the long-fractured spirits of innumerable Texas Rangers fans dotting the region's flatlands. It was a season typified by a seismic shift away from the all-hit, no-pitch paradigm of years past and towards a reborn emphasis on the virtues of top-notch fielding, as demonstrated by an incredible 70- to 90-run defensive improvement upon the 2008 squad's atrocious glovework. It was a season that can be built upon.

Of course, it was also a season derailed by crummy plate discipline, underwhelming-to-bad performance at several key positions, devastating injuries and a crushing late-season collapse that extinguished what would have been the Rangers' only 90-win campaign of the decade -- to speak nothing of the golden late-September opportunity to catch the division-winning Angels that slipped away in such gutwrenching fashion. Those issues, among others, are best saved for another day.

Barring the surprise designation of manager Ron Washington as the American League Manager of the Year (an award which will likely land in Mike Scioscia's trophy case), there is but one current Ranger who figures prominently into the post-season awards discussion, that being 21-year-old revelation Elvis Andrus and his legitimately strong candidacy for Rookie of the Year honors.

To the astonishment of few and the heavily labored sighs of many, there's considerable contention among card-carrying BBWAA members as to whom is actually the Junior Circuit's top rookie; FOXSports.com's Ken Rosenthal believes Andrus merits the hardware, whereas writers such as John Perrotto and Jayson Stark have apparently omitted Andrus from their three-player ballot altogether. A quick glance at the top rookies' end-of-season "total runs" breakdowns -- using data mined from Bill James Online and The Hardball Times -- suggests that this is, at very best, a glaring omission, and at worst something so completely asinine that we should just tune out the whole awards rigamarole:

[From BJO: "Originally published in The Fielding Bible Volume II, Total Runs ('TR') calculates a total value for each player based on his contributions on offense and on defense. There are four elements to Total Runs: runs created ('RC'), runs saved ('RS'), baserunning runs ('BR'), and a positional adjustment that enables a comparison of players across positions ('PA')." Pitchers use Pitching Runs Created, a statistic originally devised by David Gassko.]

I don't profess to be objective about Andrus, nor do I really want to be, but there's definitely something to be said for constructing well-rounded rookie credentials; he posted a rock-solid .322 wOBA over a 540-plate appearance span in his age-20 season, supplied ample baserunning value in the form of a 33-for-39 success rate, spearheaded the Rangers' defensive movement and showcased all of the qualities that voters adore: Web Gem-capturing flashiness, a hard-working disposition, a burning desire to win, highly marketable charisma -- the whole works. You name it, he's got it.

And to a certain extent, therein lies the problem with Andrus's enormous lead in the above table ... how much do the voters really value defense when it comes right down to it? If you're of the mindset that traditional statistics remain the driving force in the awards balloting (e.g. batting average, home runs, W/L records, etc.), his defensive value ends up being hardly paid any attention whatsoever by the electorate; meanwhile, Bailey, who actually leads all rookies in WPA (win probability added) by virtue of pitching numerous high-leverage innings for Oakland, converts his glittery 1.84 ERA, 26 saves and 91 strikeouts into flourishing voter support.

A quick scan of these same eight front-running rookies using a somewhat more fashionable statistic (wins above replacement) reveals a mostly unchanged ordering, with one enormous exception -- Anderson, by virtue of having logged a very sturdy fielding-independent ERA of 3.69 over 175.1 innings, ranks as a 3.8-win player, whereas the likes of Romero, Niemann and Andrus all sit right around the three-win mark, peering up towards the stratosphere.

Indeed, it's a tad difficult to fathom why Anderson is garnering so little support relative to the competition, and I suspect a big part of that has to do with (a) his pedestrian win-loss record, which resided below the .500 mark for the better part of the season and finished at a very unsexy 11-11, as well as (b) the perception that Oakland Alameda-County Coliseum is a very pitcher-friendly venue. The fly in the ointment there, however, is that he still grades out as an exemplary hurler in 2009 even with the inclusion of park factors, and maybe that places him well ahead of the pack in a valuation sense, even if nobody really wants to acknowledge it.

Now that I've laid out all of that statistical evidence in favor of Anderson, I'm going to throw it all to the wind in my personal designation of Andrus as the league's best rookie ... but as I've mentioned before in this space and will undoubtedly mention again, how much should we really care about how the BBWAA faction leans? Sure, it would make for some nice personal affirmation for Elvis and the organization as a whole, but the important thing is that we know how much he has meant to the Rangers, how integral he is to the impending success of the franchise and what a special talent he has developed into.

Sixteen months ago, Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus wrote the following of Andrus: "Stock report: Down significantly. Scouts are tired of hearing about how young and toolsy he is; he's at Double-A and it's time to produce." I wonder if those same scouts still feel that same way right now.

[Stay tuned to Baseball Time in Arlington for a brief conversation with top Latin American Rangers prospect Jurickson Profar, slated for publication later today.]