The Orioles were five points away from having back-to-back Rookie of the Year award winners. When results were announced on Monday night, Colton Cowser came up five points short of the winner, Yankees pitcher Luis Gil. Gil’s edge was 106-101, with third place Austin Wells, also of the Yankees, coming far behind, with only 17 points.

It’s a surprise result. Cowser was the favorite to win the award for most of the season going back to his strong April, and although he ran into his share of difficulties along the way, he never lost the sense that he was heading towards an eventual win. If you’ve been counting the Orioles bonus draft pick for months, you’re not the only one. Yet when it came down to it, when the voters were assigned – two per league city – and the ballots were cast, Gil was first place on 15 ballots to Cowser’s 13, and that proved to be the difference.

For those of us who have no choice but to take comfort in spite, enjoy this fact: The Yankees will not receive a bonus draft pick as a result of Gil winning the award. He was not on the requisite top prospect lists ahead of this season to qualify the Yankees for that pick. Perhaps that’s part of what ended up being the appeal for Gil to those voters who chose him: He came more out of nowhere to achieve what he did.

As a reminder, these votes were submitted after the regular season and before the postseason, so nothing that happened in the playoffs had any impact on the outcome.

It was a fine season for Gil, without any need to qualify it “for a rookie” or anything like that. The Yankees hurler started 29 games, tossed 151.2 innings, and held the league to a 3.50 ERA, with strong strikeout rates. Batters hit just .189 against him. In all, it added up to a 3.1 bWAR / 2.2 fWAR season.

Cowser was right there alongside of Gil at 3.1 bWAR, though the FanGraphs metric liked him much better due to his added defensive value. Cowser had a 4.0 fWAR season. I think that fWAR captures his quality better for that reason. This was also a great rookie season for Cowser, batting .242/.321/.447, with 24 home runs in 153 games played. He was an every day player and it’s a shame that half the voters did not credit him for that; had the Orioles platooned Cowser, he would have had much better batting numbers and perhaps would have been more appealing to some of this group of voters.

The good news about this announcement is that this is the final disappointment that Orioles fans can experience about the 2024 season. It’s all over now and we can spend the next few months getting ready to be hurt again next year.