Daily Archives: November 7, 2005

Followed by Robinson Cano and Jonny Gomes.

The Rookie of the Year Awards for both leagues will be announced today, so I thought I’d take a quick look at the candidates. Although there has been a lot of noise in comments about Robinson Cano winning the AL ROY, at best, Cano played well enough to insert himself in the discussion. Ultimately, there’s no argument for him to actually take the award home. You don’t even have to go beyond the three major rate stats to see why. Here’s Cano along with the other top offensive candidates in the American League:

Gomes is the clear standout here, leading the pack in slugging and trailing Mauer by just one point of OBP. Of course, Gomes also had the fewest plate appearances of the seven players listed above, just 407, trailing the criminally ignored Chris Shelton’s 431 and Dan Johnson’s 434. But despite his limited opportunity to display it, Gomes’ bat was so much more potent than the other players on this list that he finished second to only Mauer (554 plate appearances) in VORP (36.9 to Mauer’s 40.9–Cano, for those wondering, finished at 27.5). Mauer also played excellent defense at a more challenging defensive position (Gomes actually spent half of his time at DH and was well below average in the field) and stole 13 bases in 14 attempts against Gomes’ 9 of 14. Still, 123 points of slugging are a lot to overcome, and I’m hesitant to penalize Gomes for the Devil Rays’ refusal to give him a job until mid-June. Thus, from this list, my vote would go to Jonny.

Of course we haven’t taken the pitchers into account yet. Here are the top five rookie hurlers in the AL with their ERAs and Runs Saved Against Average. I’ve also included Chien-Ming Wang, just for fun:

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The GM meetings start today in Palm Springs California, but the morning papers are almost completely without any baseball stories. (Shrug.) Ah, welcome to the winter. It’s too early still for trades and signings and the 2005 awards are just starting to trickle in (Steve Lombardi and David Pinto do have their paws on the latest Bill James Handbook though, and are finding it to be tons’o’fun.) One item of note around these parts is that today marks the start of Bronx Banter’s fourth year. My first post appeared on November 7, 2002. The subject: Bill James joining the Red Sox.