JABO: The Year of the Rookie

Every season is a great season of baseball. It’s fair to say, however, that some seasons might be better than others; if unexpected teams succeed, records are broken, and exciting rookies debut on the biggest stage, we can witness something that transcends the customary ebb and flow of the regular season. At the All-Star break, 2015 has done exactly that.

The Twins are in the playoff hunt. A-Rod reached 3,000 hits. And, despite those unexpected and landmark events, this season’s greatest surprise might be the group of up-and-coming superstars that have broken into the big leagues. With Miguel Sano getting the call to the Twins two weeks ago, we’re now seeing many of the big-name prospects that we’ve been hearing about for the past few years: Kris Bryant, Joc Pederson, Carlos Correa, and Addison Russell (just to name a few) are all in major league starting lineups on a daily basis.

All of these players were at one time in Baseball America’s top 10 prospects list; all at one point have topped their respective team’s individual lists. It’s unusual to see so many top prospects called up in the first half of the same season, and it warrants our attention. With a chance to pause and look back on the season thus far, how have 2015’s rookies measured up against the rookie classes of the past decade?

First, we’ll look at the overall pre-All Star break production of this season’s positional rookie class compared to those of the past decade. As a cutoff, we’ll look at the combined production of the top 20 rookies for each season; that will seek to isolate only the best rookies in each season. Let’s look at the first-half production of each rookie class by Wins Above Replacement since 2005. Is 2015 actually a great year for rookie production, compared to the past decade?

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