Is Chicago Cubs Kris Bryant a Lock For NL Rookie of the Year?
By Jason Burke
Yesterday, ESPN’s Jayson Stark released his winners for a slew of MLB awards, and among the winners, he had Chicago Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant winning the NL Rookie of the Year with Matt Duffy finishing second. There will likely be no argument if Bryant does go on to receive the award, but let’s take a look at the season that Duffy has been having for the Giants and see if there is a case to be made.
In a word: no. While Matt Duffy is the second-best rookie in baseball according to WAR this season at 4.9, the one player ahead of him is Bryant at 5.6. While Duffy is hitting twenty points higher at .297, his offensive numbers just don’t add up to those of the Chicago third baseman, who leads Duffy in homers by 14 and RBI by 23.
One thought that crossed my mind was that Duffy has contributed to his team’s success more than Bryant simply because the Cubs have scored more runs than the Giants this season, but that just isn’t true. San Francisco has pushed 687 runs across the plate this season while Chicago isn’t too far behind with 679, making Bryant’s contributions all the more meaningful.
With Duffy seemingly out of the mix, the next player on Stark’s list was Pittsburgh’s Jung Ho Kang, who has a 4.0 WAR, and more home runs than Duffy (15), and arguably stacks up against Bryant better statistically even though he lacks the huge RBI numbers that the other two possess with 58 over 126 games before his season-ending injury last month.
So yes, Kris Bryant appears to be a lock as the National League’s Rookie of the Year, but if he were matched up against Houston’s Carlos Correa or Cleveland’s Francisco Lindor we may have a very different story on our hands. Correa has just four fewer home runs in roughly 180 less at-bats while both Correa and Lindor have higher dWAR scores than Bryant’s 0.4. By comparison, Lindor (1.5) and Correa (0.6) have both trumped Bryant and it took them 50 fewer games to do so. Bryant’s overall WAR is still higher due to his bat, but his 195 strikeouts could have been enough to sour voters.
While arguing who would win between these three is just for fun with Bryant the clear favorite in the NL and the AL race being a coin flip, the underlying theme here is that there is a ton of talent in the Minor Leagues just waiting to break through. Whether they are top prospects like Bryant, Lindor or Correa, relative unknowns like Duffy, or signed from another country like Kang, talent is flooding to the Majors and all we have to do is just sit back and enjoy the show.