AL’s Top Rookie: None?

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Wil Myers won the 2013 AL Rookie of the Year award, as announced this evening. It was generally acknowledged that Myers’ season was likely the best of a not particularly impressive class of AL rookie seasons this year. Baseball-reference’s WAR ranks several AL rookies seasons a bit ahead of Myers’ 2.0 WAR total, but no AL rookie produced a WAR season above 2.7, so nobody can really claim to have a big WAR advantage over the ROY winner.

That lack of a rookie season over 2.7 WAR (pitching WAR for pitchers, overall WAR for everyday players) is very unusual in the AL. Indeed, it looks to me as if the last time the top WAR for a rookie season in the AL was under 2.8 was 1958 (not including the strike year of 1994). Albie Pearson of the old Washington Senators won the Rookie of the Year in the AL in 1958, sixty-five years ago.

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11 years ago

It may also be the only non-strike season in the AL to have no position player reach 500 PAs. I went back to 1958 and all of those seasons have at least one player with 500+ PAs. Didn’t feel like going back any further.

This past season J.B. Shuck led AL rookies with 478 PAs.

11 years ago

Reply to Ed

Oops the first sentence should refer to rookies.

Richard Chester

11 years ago

Reply to Ed

If you were a PI subscriber you could easily determine that 1918, 1919 and 1946 were other seasons with no AL rookie with 500+ PA.

Richard Chester

11 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

And I am fairly certain it could be done by a non-subscriber.

Richard Chester

11 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

I went to the library and used their computer as a non-subscriber. It was easy. If anyone cares I could explain how to do it.

Chris C

11 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

I’d be interested if you would explain.

Richard Chester

11 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Finally I have a taker. Go to the PI Click on Season Finders Player Batting Click Find Seasons with Players Matching Criteria Set the years to 1901-1920 Click Yes for Rookie Status Select American League For Choose a Stat set PA equal to or greater than 500 Click Get Report Up comes a result sheet with 20 rows of data, one for each year. The years are listed in descending order of #Matching. The first nine rows are blank and the lower 11 rows have complete data. The particular data you are looking for appear in the last two rows,… Read more »

11 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

Using Richard’s method I found that this happened in back to back years in the NL – 1979 and 1980. In fact only three NL rookies – Jeffrey Leonard, Ken Oberkfell and Rudy Law – even reached 400 PAs those two seasons.

BTW, there are other years in the NL that this happened. But I was struck by it happening back to back years and wanted to focus on that.

oneblankspace

11 years ago

Reply to Richard Chester

The 1918 season was shortened due to World War I. The Red Sox won the World Series on September 11th.

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to oneblankspace

Whoops. Just remembered, 1919 was also a short season.

James Smyth

11 years ago

Reply to Ed

Picking up where you left off, the last season was 1946. Browns 1B Chuck Stevens led the AL with 485 PA. He was the first batter Satchel Paige faced in the major leagues (he singled). Stevens is still alive and kickin’ at 95!

Author

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to James Smyth

I guess Stevens learned from Satchel not to look back….

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to Ed

Ed:

That got me, too. I think Myers was a good choice, given that he only did a little over half a season’s work to put up those numbers: 50 runs, 98 hits, 23 doubles, 13 HRs, 53 RBIs, 160TBs. Lough, the guy with the 2.7 WAR, also for about half a season, got a big boost—here we go again— for his dWAR, but he didn’t impress the voters, possibly because he batted .286 with an OBP of .311. Looks like he got one vote total. He’s also 27 years old.

Author

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to no statistician but

Let’s say Lough made about 20 plays in the outfield that Myers failed to make. That’s what the basic fielding stats suggest. That’s 20 hits converted to outs. If we treat that as the equivalent of Lough getting 20 more hits at bat in the same number of plate appearances, we can figure what his offensive numbers would look like if he had contributed those hits on offense rather than defense. If we guess those 20 hits would be comprised of 17 singles and three doubles, I get an OPS for Lough of .858, compared to Myers’ .831. In these… Read more »

mosc

11 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

I just can’t fathom a corner outfielder adding or detracting that much defensive value in comparison with another corner outfielder. Willie Mays couldn’t have tracked down 20 more balls in LF than, say John Kruk. RFIELD thinks I’m crazy and tells me that he’ll track down an additional ball like ever other game or at worst every third game. I’ve been to a lot of ball games. I don’t remember that many where the fielder should have had a play but was simply not there for the attempt due to being slow/poor choice of lines/etc. Center Fielders you see it… Read more »

Author

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

I’m just looking at what Lough and Myers actually did. Lough and Myers each started about half a season’s worth of games in the outfield, but Myers converted 1.95 outs per 9 innings out there while Lough converted 2.18, a difference of one out every four games, or twenty over half a season. Yes, it is certainly possible that Lough’s extra outs reflect the fact that more balls were hit his way or more easy-to-play balls were hit his way. OTOH, it’s also possible that more balls were hit toward Myers and that the raw outs per inning numbers are… Read more »

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

On the other hand, maybe he just had an extraordinary amount of Lough.

And Myers had no Lough at all.

Author

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

I thought Lough’s name is pronounced the same as this guy’s: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lowede01.shtml, rather than like this guy’s: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/L/LuckAn00.htm

no statistician but

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

Lighten up, Birtelcom, and enjoy the play on words.

“Lough” is pronounced lôk. From the Middle English for Lake, like the Scottish “loch.” Doesn’t matter how this guy pronounces it, for the purposes of the pun.

Author

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

Oh, I go it, nsb, and I did laugh (or lauk?) when I read it. But you don’t get off Scot-free; it still gets a small point deduction from OPS (Optimal Pun Satisfaction) for not tracking the actual player’s pronunciation.

Editor

Bryan O'Connor

11 years ago

If Fernandez or Puig had more WAR in interleague games than Myers or Lough did in AL games, should we amend the rules to let one of the NL guys win the AL RoY?

mosc

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

Of course not. We don’t deduct interleague games from NL player’s WAR totals either.

Just showing how increasingly AL and NL don’t matter. Once DH adopted in the NL, I hope they don’t even get separate awards anymore.

Author

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to mosc

I do think Bryan was kidding.

Arguably with the wild cards being allocated on a league basis, leagues remain quite important. especially with interleague play still being a small portion of each team’s schedule. I like the idea of 6 MVPs — one for each division. There aren’t enough rookies in any particular season for that approach to the ROY, though.

Editor

Bryan O'Connor

11 years ago

Reply to birtelcom

Yup. Just having some fun with the lack of quality rookies in the AL in a year in which the NL was loaded. I think some of that owes to the quality of play in the two leagues and the relative difficulty of succeeding as a rookie in the AL, but Puig and Fernandez, at least, certainly would’ve been stars in either league.

6 MVPs! Davis, Cabrera, Trout, Freeman, McCutchen, Goldschmidt? That’s a weak field in the NL East. Interesting opportunity for a nontraditional candidate like Andrelton Simmons or Matt Harvey.

James Smyth

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

I put together two lists of hypothetical divisional MVP’s for the six-division era. One lists that division’s high-finisher in the MVP vote and the other has the division leader in B-Ref WAR.

http://jamessmythbroadcast.blogspot.com/2013/11/divisional-mvps.html

Albert Pujols “took home” seven out of eight NL Central MVPs by both BBWAA voting and bWAR.

Author

birtelcom

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

That is really splendid work, James. Very interesting. One thing I notice is how pitchers dominated the WAR MVP in the AL East for a long time, winning 10 of the first 11, until A-Rod moved in. Also, Bobby Abreu, Jim Edmonds and Andy Pettitte all totaled over 60 WAR since 1994, but fail to make any of the lists.

Editor

Bryan O'Connor

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

This is great, James. Look at Evan Grant’s first-place vote carrying Michael Young to the AL West MVP in 2011 despite 2.3 WAR. I’d guess that Ian Kinsler or Adrian Beltre would have won if voters filled out division-specific ballots.

My favorite division WAR leader is Justin Thompson. He earned 5.6 of his 6.7 career WAR in 1997, good enough to top the AL Central.

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

Great stuff James. I took the liberty of sorting the winners of the WAR award by team. Here are the totals: AL East: Yankees: 6 Blue Jays: 6 Red Sox: 5 Rays: 2 Orioles: 1 AL Central: Tigers: 6 Indians: 6 Twins: 5 White Sox: 2 Royals: 1 AL West: Mariners: 9 Angels: 5.5 Rangers: 4 Athletics: 1.5 NL East: Braves: 7 Mets: 5 Phillies: 4 Marlins: 2 Expos: 2 NL Central: Cardinals: 9 Astros: 5 Brewers: 2 Pirates: 2 Cubs: 1 Reds: 1 NL West: Giants: 10 Diamondbacks: 4 Rockies: 3 Padres: 2 Dodgers: 1 One small correction on… Read more »

Editor

Doug

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

RJ,

Despite having just one rookie WAR winner, the Dodgers are far and away the leaders in RoY picks with 10 position players (second are the Senators/Twins with 7).

The Dodgers also have 6 RoY pitchers, and had the RoY winner in 5 straight seasons (1992-96) and 4 straight seasons (1979-82).

bells

11 years ago

Reply to Bryan O'Connor

Hahaha, Mo Vaughn.

Doug

11 years ago

Ron Kittle was 1983 AL RoY with 1.8 WAR, and Chris Chambliss won in 1971 with 0.5 WAR. Further back are Bob Allison (1959) with 1.4, Luis Aparicio (1956) with 1.5, and Harvey Kuenn (1953) with 1.8. In the NL, there have been numerous NL RoYs with WAR below 2.0, including: – Chris Coghlan, 2009 (1.1) – Todd Hollandsworth, 1996 (1.1) – Raul Mondesi, 1994 (1.8) – Eric Karros, 1992 (0.3) – Jerome Walton, 1989 (1.9) – Tommy Helms, 1966 (1.4) – Billy Williams, 1961 (1.2) – Bill Virdon, 1955 (1.4) Among pitchers are Kazahiro Sasaki (2000, 1.3), Steve Howe… Read more »

Artie Z.

11 years ago

Reply to Doug

Karros likely won ROY in 1992 because (1) he hit 20 HRs (Reggie Sanders was 2nd in NL rookie HRs with 12) and (2) he was really the only “full year” rookie. Sanders had the next highest number of PAs (438), then Ruben Amaro (427) and then no one over 400 (Moises Alou had 377). Karros was at 589.

The only rookie pitchers in the NL that year with more than 120 IP were Donovan Osborne and Butch Henry, both of whom had negative WAR.

It was a lot easier for NL voters in 1993 …

11 years ago

Reply to Artie Z.

Karros was the first of 5 straight Dodgers to win Rookie of the Year. He was followed by Piazza, Mondesi, Nomo, and Hollandsworth. The Dodgers also had a streak of 4 straight from 79-82 with Sutcliffe, Howe, Valenzuela, and Sax.

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10 years ago

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