Archive for MLB rookies

Two years ago, the Cincinnati Reds finished the season by starting rookie pitchers in 64 straight games. Overall, rookies made 110 starts for the Reds that season, third most in history behind the 1998 Florida Marlins and the 2009 Oakland Athletics. The ’98 Marlins team featured the dismantled remnants of the previous season’s World Series title team and lost 104 games. The A’s team finished .500, as Brett Anderson and Gio Gonzalez made solid debuts while Trevor Cahill, Vin Mazzaro, and Josh Outman also pitched. As might be expected, the 2015 Reds were bad, but given their reliance on rookies, we might think the staff might prove to have more veterans in 2016 and 2017. That hasn’t been the case at all.

After getting 110 rookie starts in 2015, the Cincinnati Reds followed up with another 56 rookie starts last year. In the last 100 seasons, only 24 franchises have ever had 81 games or more started by rookie pitchers. Of those teams, the 1934 Philadelphia A’s, the 1936 Philadelphia A’s, the 1978 Oakland A’s, the 2009 Baltimore Orioles, and the 2015 Reds were the only ones to follow up the season questions with another 50 starts by rookies. For the Orioles, Brian Matusz barely avoided losing his rookie status in 2009, so his 32 starts in 2010 comprised the bulk of the Orioles’ 50 rookie starts, with Jake Arrieta nabbing the other 18.

As for the A’s, there have been 234 team seasons over the past 100 years in which rookies started at least 50 games; the A’s alone are responsible 12% (28) of them. Whether in Philadelphia, Kansas City, or Oakland, the organization has almost always been a spendthrift operation, and from 1935 to 1967, the club finished in last place or second-to-last place 25 of 33 seasons, never placing higher than fourth. Only 30 times in history has a team started rookie pitchers in 50 or more games at least two seasons in a row, and the A’s organization is responsible for seven of those times, encompassing 19 seasons.

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Last Monday, at Just A Bit Outside, I looked into this year’s positional rookie class, and the fact that they were the best first-half class in the past ten years when measured by Wins Above Replacement. They have more overall total WAR, more individuals with over 1.0 WAR, and represent the first rookie class in at least a decade to have two rookies with over 3.0 WAR in the first half (Kris Bryant and Joc Pederson).

In short, this is a sort of renaissance year for positional rookies, and the article led me to wonder just how great 2015’s rookies are when compared to a larger sample of years, and a larger number of criteria. So here we are!

We’re going to be focusing mainly on positional players in today’s piece, as they’re really the standout group this season; rookie pitchers are having an about average year (by WAR) compared to years in this past decade, so that’s a topic for another day. As a primer, I’ll provide two charts from last week’s piece to get the ball rolling, and to get us up to speed with what was already covered.

First, I took the top-20 rookies by first-half WAR for each season in the past decade and looked at combined WAR:

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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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