FG on Fox: Will 2015’s Rookies Suffer a Sophomore Slump?

by
December 7, 2015

2015 was an unquestionably special year in baseball: we witnessed teams that hadn’t made the postseason in 20 years break through the barrier, saw latent fanbases reborn, and finally, after falling just short in 2014, a magic-fueled, unconventional team won the World Series. Because of a mixture of player development trends and incredible fortune, we also saw something exceedingly rare: the best positional rookie class in the past century. The likes of Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa, Matt Duffy, and many others announced their arrival with exceptional first-year performances, taking the league by storm and bringing about a new golden age for young, ultra-talented position players.

We’ve stated many times how much better the 2015 rookie positional class was than any other in the past hundred years. The fact bears repeating again because of its magnitude. Below you’ll find a chart showing the average Wins Above Replacement for positional rookies for a full season of plate appearances (600 PAs) from 1920 to 2015:

Overall_Rookie WAR:600, 1920-2015_1

As we can see, no other season is close to 2015. There are a few reasons for that, reasons that are complex and outside the particular scope of this article. For now, this should serve as background for what we’re discussing today: how sophomore/follow-up seasons compare to great rookie campaigns. We’ll be focusing specifically on the years that followed Rookie of the Year campaigns to try to discern whether a “sophomore slump” occurred among the league’s best first-year players, and we’ll also bring in the 2016 projections for our exceptional crop of 2015 rookies to look at next year’s expected performance.

Read the rest on Fox Sports.

 





 

Owen Watson writes for FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. Follow him on Twitter @ohwatson.

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Hurtlocker
8 years ago

If you look at the 66+ years of ROY’s in both the NL and AL, there are very few “busts” in those lists. (actually many more HOF players than bust players) Just using that “standard” it would seem unlikely that the great group of rookies in 2015 would not have pretty good career’s. They may slump as the leagues adjust, but good rookie players seem to stay at least above average.

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JimNYC
8 years ago
Reply to  Hurtlocker

Very few “busts”? In the last 40 years, we have Butch Metzger, Mark Fidrych, Pat Zachry, John Castino (three good years does not a career make), Steve Howe (not as productive as you remember), Joe Charboneau, Todd Worrell, Vince Coleman (career: 11.6 WAR), Ron Kittle, Greg Olson, Jerome Walton, Pat Listach, Marty Cordova, Bob Hamelin, Todd Hollandsworth, Ben Grieve, Scott Williamson, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Jason Jennings, Angel Berroa, Eric Hinske, Bobby Crosby, Andrew Bailey, Jeremy Hellickson, Neftali Feliz (there’s time but I don’t buy it), and Wil Myers (ditto).

Also I have to call Dontrelle Willis a bust, despite his epic 2005 and three other good years. Man, what a waste.

Granted, Rookies of the Year have a much higher hit rate than do other rookies. But you’ve still got a 30% chance of having nothing at all on your hands — and some of those Rookies of the Year were AMAZING their rookie seasons (Eric Hinske put up 4.8 WAR his rookie year and 6.2 WAR in the remaining 11 years of his career).

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Jason Bourne
8 years ago
Reply to  JimNYC

Some of those guys aren’t really busts, they were just never very good to begin with. And how is Todd Worrell a bust?

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JimNYC
8 years ago
Reply to  Jason Bourne

7.5 total career WAR out of a Rookie of the Year doesn’t constitute a bust?

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hurtlocker
8 years ago
Reply to  JimNYC

Some of these guys also were injured, which doesn’t really make you a bust. The percentage is closer to 20% actually, depends on the definition of bust. That’s pretty good odds considering 80% of top draft picks never make it at all.

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