A fair amount of Most Valuable Player and Cy Young discussion has been going around lately, and while it seems a bit early with a month left in the season, I suppose it is understandable. There has been less discussion of Rookie of the Year. I don’t blame anyone for that. I really don’t get that worked up about the individual year-end awards. (I’m not quite brave enough to say that I don’t care, maybe if Greinke hadn’t won in 2009 the story would have been different.) And if I’m not that pumped about the MVP or Cy Young races, why should I be excited about Rookie of the Year?

Still, a number of rookies have been impressive this season, so it is worth discussing. Brett Lawrie, for example, has hit so well in only 26 major league games that he’s already at two WAR for the season, right of there with the best of the American League rookie hitters. What if he (or Desmond Jennings, or whatever player you want to pick) keeps this up? What if they put up more value than any other rookie in less than half of a season? Would you vote for them for Rookie of the Year?

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Episode Forty-Five
In which the panel takes one step back and, like, a half-dozen forward.

Headlines
You Can Spell Josh Hamilton Without M or V or P, But You Shouldn’t*
Lefties, Lefties Everywhere: AL Cy Candidates
Cage Fighting: Cameron v Joe Pawl

*Especially since M is a letter in his surname.

Featuring
Dave Cameron, Bad as He Wants to Be
Jackie Moore, Real-Live Middle Wester
Joe Pawl, Real-Live New Yorker

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio on the flip-flop. (Approximately 40 min play time.)

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This week we’re taking a look at some of the top rookies in Major League Baseball in an attempt to ascertain who is the most deserving candidate for Rookie of the Year in both the American and National Leagues. Today, we’ll take a look at four position players in the American League (minimum 200 at-bats).

Elvis Andrus, SS, Texas Rangers

Andrus received a lot of hype early on in the season for his solid play, but that has quieted down a bit. The soon-to-be 21-year-old infielder had a slow June and July average-wise and the power he showed in May never reappeared. He hit two homers and had a total of eight extra-base hits that month, but has just six extra base hits since June 1 (157 at-bats). Overall, the youngster has a respectable line of .262/.326/.361 with 20 steals in 22 attempts. With Andrus, though, his defense must also be weighed heavily when discussing his value to the Rangers. He’s made 14 errors, but Andrus gets to balls no other shortstop can dream of reaching and his UZR of 7.8 is third in all of Major League Baseball behind Jack Wilson (Seattle/Pittsburgh) and J.J. Hardy (Milwaukee).

Gordon Beckham, 3B, Chicago White Sox

Beckham has not been in the Majors quite as long as the other three rookies, but he has arguably made the most noise over the past month. After a slow start (that oddly had some writers calling him a bust with a lousy swing), the infielder finished his first month in the Majors with a line of .267/.353/.387 in 75 at-bats. Since then, he’s been one of the club’s best hitters and now has an overall line of .302/.369/.483 with six homers in 205 at-bats. The 22-year-old also has 19 doubles, which is tops amongst rookies in the AL. Beckham also leads in average, on-base percentage, slugging and RBIs. He’s third in homers behind Reimold and teammate Jayson Nix. The former college and minor league shortstop has also been learning his new position on the fly at the hot corner.

Chris Getz, 2B, Chicago White Sox

A former fourth-round pick out of the University of Michigan, Getz just keeps plugging along. The middle infielder isn’t flashy but he’s put together a respectable first season in the Majors with a line of .268/.320/.368 in 310 at-bats. He has 18 steals in 20 attempts. Getz has also scored 43 runs. He doesn’t have much power (.100 ISO) but he has a healthy line drive rate at 19.7%. The 25-year-old has a solid strikeout rate at 13.9 K% but his walk rate is a little low at 6.1 BB%. Getz looks like a solid No. 2 hitter. He leads AL rookies in hits and is tied with Elvis Andrus in runs scored.

Nolan Reimold, LF, Baltimore Orioles

Reimold’s teammate (and the top prospect in baseball entering 2009) Matt Wieters is slowly picking up steam but he has yet to top 200 at-bats in the majors this season. As such, Reimold is currently the favorite amongst Baltimore’s rookies to win the AL Rookie of the Year. Reimold hit a few rough patches in the minors, which temporarily clouded his potential, but he entered pro ball with some hype as a second round draft pick out of Bowling Green University in 2005. The 25-year-old outfielder has a solid line of .272/.365/.444 with 10 homers in 239 at-bats. He also has an encouraging walk rate for a young player at 11.8 BB%, and a solid strikeout rate for a power-hitting prospect at 20.1 K%. Reimold leads rookies in the AL in homers, walks, and is second in RBI as well as OPS.

So, who do you think is most deserving amongst AL rookies for the year-end award? Will Wieters or another rookie hitter climb the charts in the final two months and steal the coveted title of best rookie hitter?

Tomorrow, we’ll look at some rookie pitchers in the American League.

My, how time flies. It’s already June and the 2009 MLB Amateur Draft takes place today, which will cause an (exciting) influx of talent into the sport. But there are already some pretty gifted, young players in Major League Baseball. A number of those players are currently vying for the American League Rookie of the Year award. If you sift through all the names, two players float to the surface: Texas’ Elvis Andrus and Detroit’s Rick Porcello.

When the season began, there weren’t many people (outside of Texas and Detroit) that thought these two players would be in the thick of the Rookie of the Year race at this point of the season. It’s not that these two players aren’t talented – they are, and have been at the top of their organizations’ prospect charts (Andrus was signed by Atlanta and traded to Texas) since they signed as amateurs – but they are the youngest players in the Majors at the age of 20. As well, Porcello was just drafted out of high school in 2007 and, after signing too late to play that year, he spent just one year in the minors, which is virtually unheard of for a prep prospect.

So, to this point, which player deserves the Rookie of the Year award? One of the most exciting things about comparing these two players is the fact that both 20-year-old rookies are playing for first-place clubs, so they’re both contributing to a winning team. The biggest difference between the two players is that Andrus is a position player (shortstop), while Porcello is a starting pitching. Andrus likely gets the immediate edge because he impacts his club everyday, while Porcello takes to the mound once every five days. Unfair, perhaps, but a valid point nonetheless.

Currently, Andrus is hitting a solid .276/.330/.405 with three home runs and nine stolen bases in 12 attempts. In 49 games (163 at-bats), the Venezuelan shortstop has plate rates of 6.3 BB% and 13.% K%. Obviously, he’s a bit of a free swinger with a low walk rate, but his strikeout rate shows that he makes good contact. His line-drive rate of almost 20% shows that he’s not just flicking his bat at the ball to make contact with non-strikes; He’s hitting the ball with some authority.

As well, Andrus is playing to his strengths with a ground-ball rate of 57.2%. He’s not a power hitter, so he’s putting the ball on the ground (or on the line) and good things have been happening. Another encouraging number is the BABIP rate of .304. He hasn’t been very lucky with his balls in play, so we can expect a few more to drop in over the course of the season, which could increase his batting average even more.

We also, of course, need to discuss Andrus’ defense because, well, that’s the main reason he’s in the Majors. The gifted fielder has already received some consideration for a Gold Glove. His fielding percentage is a little below the league norm, but that can be blamed somewhat on the fact that Andrus gets to a lot more balls than the average fielder. His RF/g (range factor per game) is 5.16, compared to the league average of 3.94. Obviously, Andrus is impacting the club with his glove just as much as with his bat, if not more.

Porcello, on the other hand, had a bit of a slow start to the year and lost three of his first four decisions (Like it or not, win totals seems to be a popular category amongst RoY voters). However, the young hurler then went on a tear in May and won all five of his starts. In those five starts, the New Jersey native allowed just five runs in total.

Overall, in 11 starts on the season, Porcello has a 3.98 ERA, but his FIP is 5.10 which suggests he’s been getting a lot of help from his fielders. That’s not surprising considering that he’s a ground-ball pitcher who lives and dies by his defense. The right-hander has a ground-ball rate of 55.4%. However, when batters get the ball in the air against Porcello, they usually hit it hard and he’s already allowed 10 home runs (17.1 HR/FB) while pitching in a spacious home ballpark.

Despite putting a lot of balls in play (His strikeout rate is just 5.31 K/9), Porcello has allowed just 59 hits in 61 innings of work. For such a young pitcher, he controls the strike zone very well and he’s walked just 20 batters (2.95 BB/9). He is struggling a bit in the splits column. Porcello has handled right-handed batters very well (.186 batting average) but he’s allowed a line of .300/.362/.500 to left-handed batters. An improved changeup (which he uses just 9.3% of the time) might help to combat those troublesome match-ups.

At this point, my feeling would be that Andrus deserves the Rookie of the Year award a little more than Porcello, who is showing that there is still some work to be done when you look at his FIP and HR/FB rate. As for those actually voting on the award, they will likely be attracted to Andrus’ flashy play and the fact that Texas has improved significantly over last year – in no small part because of Andrus’ defense, which has allowed the Rangers’ pitchers to put balls in play with confidence.

Regardless of who is deserving of the award, both teams should be incredibly excited for the future. Both rookies are building solid foundations for what should be excellent MLB careers.

As we are all aware, Evan Longoria and Geovany Soto took home Rookie of the Year hardware for the 2008 season. They were both incredibly deserving, as Longoria produced an .874 OPS and 1.71 WPA/LI in just 122 games, while adding plus defense at third base. Soto posted an OPS of .868 and a 1.36 WPA/LI as the Cubs backstop. There were several other players who may have won the award in another season, such as Mike Aviles, Hiroki Kuroda, and Joey Votto, but one player that does not fit this bill is Edinson Volquez.

Now, before you jump on my back for saying Volquez deserved no part of the Rookie of the Year award, let me explain myself! It has nothing to do with his statistics: a 3.21 ERA, 9.46 K/9, and 1.67 WPA/LI definitely deserves plenty of recognition. It’s just that, well, Edinson Volquez… is… not… a… rookie.

Yep, that’s correct, he is not a rookie, and yet he managed to receive three second-place votes in this year’s balloting, finishing fourth on the National League ballot. The overall qualifying rules for determining a rookie are not that tough, either, as in no prior season or seasons, can a player accrue more than 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched. In 2005, Volquez logged 12.2 innings. He added another 33.1 in 2006, and an additional 34 in 2007, giving him exactly 80 innings pitched entering this season. Had he produced this year’s numbers last season he would have qualified, but he was 30 innings over the qualifying total entering 2008, and yet this error still managed to happen.

Now, I’m not going to say newspaper writers or those voting are idiots, or anything like that, or add in any hot-shot about their evaluation techniques, but I will say this: I took part in three different season-long polls during which multiple bloggers voted on the Rookie of the Year, Cy Young Award, and MVP each and every week, and we knew from the get-go that Volquez was not a rookie. If we—bloggers in our mothers basement—knew this guy was not a rookie, how is it that Edinson managed to finish in fourth place on the official ballot?

I guess from now on, Major League Baseball needs to clarify with the award-voters that just because you have not heard of someone, it does not automatically make them a rookie. Now I’m waiting for a story to surface that Carlos Quentin and his 395 pre-2008 at-bats finished in third place in the junior circuit. This may be an easy mistake, and ultimately it did not affect the overall finish in the National League, but many fans take these awards very seriously, and if those voting are not even going to follow the rules or do a little bit of research, their voting privileges should be revoked.