The BBA‘s 3rd postseason award is the Goose Gossage Award,which honors the best relief pitchers in Major League Baseball.

This year’s selections were an easy decision for the membership and, for the first, time they honored a player for a second consecutive year in the same category.

In 2011, Atlanta Braves closer Craig Kimbrel was awarded both the Goose Gossage and Willie Mays awards. This season, Kimbrel received 87% of the vote to claim his second consecutive award as the National League’s premier relief pitcher. Making his second consecutive All Star appearance in 2012, he lead the National League in saves with 42.

The American League vote was equally lopsided as Fernando Rodney of the Tampa Bay Rays also received 87% of the vote in his league. While Rodney did not lead his league in saves, finishing with 48 to Jim Johnson’s 51, his minuscule 0.60 earned run average, and dominance during the 2012 campaign impressed the voting body.

Previous Goose Gossage Award Winners:
2011: Jose Valverde, Detroit Tigers; Craig Kimbrel, Atlanta Braves
2010: Rafael Soriano, Tampa Bay Rays; Brian Wilson, San Francisco Giants

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of this writing, the organization consists of 232 blogs spanning all 30 major league squads as well as general baseball writing.

The BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into “chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted. The blog chapters that are focused on general baseball were allowed two votes as well, which they could use both on the same league or split between the two leagues.

Coming up: The Final two Awards for the BBA, the Walter Johnson, and Stan Musial, will be awarded next week.