Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.

 
More on... AL Rookie of the Year

We'll see how we want to arrange what is sure to be a series of postings on who we think should win season-end hardware, but for the moment I'll simply piggyback Dan's posting on the AL Rookie of the Year. The relevant stats for three of the ROY hopefuls have been laid out for you in the previous post, but I think it only fair to invite a few more deserving guests to the consideration party. In keeping with the theme, here's a piece of the block of stat lines Dan presented, with two more candidates added to the mix.

.282/.339/.499 (Jody Gerut)
.261/.333/.482 (Mark Teixeira)
.287/.352/.437 (Hideki Matsui)
.293/.344/.462 (Angel Berroa)
.291/.328/.419 (Rocco Baldelli)

I've heard all these guys have their names mentioned in the debate, and rightly so. Berroa plays what is clearly the most difficult position of any of our candidates (shortstop), and Baldelli is a better outfielder than Gerut or Matsui (Teixeira too, in the 25 games he's played out there) and a joy to watch perform. I really like all these guys, but the final two in my eyes to consider for the award are the ones with the dimmest futures going forward over the long haul, in part due to their ages: Matsui, who is 29, and Berroa, who is 25.

While I respect Dan's choice of Gerut and wouldn't complain if it went that way (though I can't see it happening) and think Teixeira is going to be the clear-cut best player of this group in ten years, Berroa's put up very valuable offensive numbers at a key defensive position all season long. I have no trouble admitting that I, like so many others, thought Berroa was going to be a bust...and he's proved us all wrong. Matsui's a terrific player, and while I'd probably ultimately cast my vote for him, I fully expect him to lose. There's enough of a stir now about whether or not he should be eligible for the award that has conveniently reared its head now that a first-year Japanese player is on the Yankees as opposed to the Mariners. I think there'll be enough voters who leave him off their ballots for this reason to ensure that someone else gets the award. If we were going to remove Matsui from consideration (as I do think should happen, but through official channels...I'd like to see the Rookie of the Year awards given to Kazuhiro Sasaki and Ichiro Suzuki retroactively awarded to Terrence Long and C.C. Sabathia, respectively as well, as they finished second in 2000 and 2001), I'd vote Berroa.

I really like Jason Davis and think he's going to be an awesome major league pitcher...but his season (8-11, 4.68 ERA, 172 hits (25 homers), 47 walks, 85 strikeouts over 165.1 innings) simply doesn't warrant consideration among competition this stiff. He, along with fellow pitcher-on-a-bad-team Jeremy Bonderman, could well be among the best in this rookie class in a couple of years, but as we know, that's not the purpose of the Rookie of the Year exercise.
posted by VZW Watcher at 5:32 PM -