BBA: AL and NL Rookies of the Year

Posted by Bill Baer on Wednesday, October 14, 2009 at 1:59 pm

One of the current projects of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance is award balloting, done in a style similar to that of the Baseball Writers Association of America. Every “area” will have votes cast by its blogger representatives. From the Philadelphia region, myself and the crew at Fire Eric Bruntlett will be voting on all of the awards. Regions with more representatives will have the votes split up, with some voting for MVP, others for Cy Young, and so on. It’s a great and intriguing project, so make sure to stop by the BBA website for the final tallies.

Feel free to chime in with your thoughts whether you agree or disagree. On Sunday, I detailed my choices for the AL and NL Managers of the Year. Today, I’ll explain my picks for the AL and NL Rookies of the Year. As usual, feel free to leave a comment and start a discussion on the subject.

American League

To be honest, the AL Rookie of the Year is about as uninteresting as it’s been in a while. No one really stood out. In terms of Wins Above Replacement (WAR) per FanGraphs, the Athletics’ Brett Anderson with his 4.06 ERA led the way at 3.8. Brad Bergesen led all AL rookie starters in ERA at 3.43 but compiled only 2.3 WAR.

As for hitters, just two AL hitters with a minimum of 200 plate appearances crossed the .800 OPS threshold. Nolan Reimold, teammate of Bergesen, led with an .831 OPS and Gordon Beckham of the White Sox followed at .808. The two only compiled WAR totals of  1.0 and 2.1 respectively, and neither played above-average defense.

On the flip side, you have Texas Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus, who didn’t bring much with the bat, but was an excellent fielder and ran the bases intelligently. According to Baseball Prospectus, he was the 15th best runner in all of baseball, adding 4.3 runs above expectation. Andrus’ production comes out to around 3.5 WAR if you include his base running prowess (FanGraphs’ WAR does not).

Based on WAR, Brett Anderson is your AL Rookie of the Year. However, I have reservations about giving the award to a pitcher whose FIP was closer to 4 than to 3 and whose ERA was above 4. Even though he wasn’t much with the bat and despite being several tenths of a point of WAR behind Anderson, Andrus is my pick for AL ROY.

• Second Place: Brett Anderson, Oakland Athletics
• Third Place: Gordon Beckham, Chicago White Sox

National League

Unlike the AL, the NL ROY race is intriguing. Not only are there no fewer than three viable pitching candidates, there are five position players in the mix as well. Perhaps the AL winner can remit his award to the runner-up in the NL.

Looking at WAR, we can narrow our field of eight down to six. The Phillies’ J.A. Happ and the Rockies’ Dexter Fowler are the only candidates with a WAR total under 2. Andrew McCutchen of the Pirates and Randy Wells of the Cubs are the only two with a WAR total above 3. The middle four — Tommy Hanson, Garrett Jones, Chris Coghlan, and Casey McGehee — are separated by fewer than three-tenths of a point of WAR, between 2.33 and 2.60 (accounting for base running).

First place is easy: McCutchen leads Wells by nearly a half-win (3.46 to 3). Second place is also easy: Wells leads by nearly a half-win as well (3 to 2.6). So we have first and second place, and I don’t think anyone will argue with that. Now we have to find a third place winner.

McGehee is the first one out, since he sits at 2.33 WAR and the rest are between 2.55 and 2.60. Now, how do we pick one out of three that are separated by only five-hundreths of a point? Should we use intangibles? Team standings? We have already accounted for hitting, fielding, base running, and pitching. Should we just go by the numbers and pick Hanson, since he sits .03 WAR ahead of Jones, who sits .02 WAR ahead of Coghlan?

I flipped a series of coins. That’s right: I used coin flips to decide third place on my Rookie of the Year ballot. Does this invalidate any of my future criticisms of the BBWAA?

The results: Coghlan won the coin flip against Jones, and Hanson won the coin flip against Coghlan.

• First Place: Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh Pirates
• Second Place: Randy Wells, Chicago Cubs
• Third Place: Tommy Hanson, Atlanta Braves

Tough luck, Chris and Garrett.