MLB Rookie of the Year: Is it a solid success predictor?

The MLB Rookie of the Year awards are coveted but rarely expected by new players. How good a predictor of future great success are they?

Well, now that we’re all stuck with no baseball of any sort for a bit – if not all summer – we have to address the eternal question of whether or not a decent predictor of highest-level success in major league baseball is the MLB Rookie of the Year award.

That’s easy, you might say – it’s obviously mixed. For every Derek Jeter, there has to be at least one Marty Cordova.

Hmm. Everybody knows about Jeter, but how great, or awful, in fact, was Marty Cordova? Better yet, where did Marty Cordova play and when?

(Minnesota Twins fans can tell you, and so can fans in a few other cities. They’ll also tell you Cordova hit over .300 twice, and the really observant ones will tell you he made over $16 million in his career, which was truncated by back injuries.)

How about currently, though? How much is the modern MLB Rookie of the Year award worth even paying attention to?

Let’s take a look at the last decade, minus the past two seasons’ winners because, obviously, it’s really early to say anything about the 2018 and ’19 ROYs, with all due respect to Pete Alonzo.

2008 – In the year the Phillies beat the Rays for their second-ever World Series title, the MLB Rookie of the Year prizes were taken by Evan Longoria, then of those AL Rays, and Geovany Soto, then of the Cubs. Soto also came in 13th in the MVP vote that year and went to the All-Star game. Longoria came in 11th in the NL and was an All-Star.

And my daughter started calling Longoria “Eva” when he showed up in the World Series against her Phillies. She was ten.

2009 – The winners were Chris Coghlan in the NL and Andrew Bailey. Coghlan hit an eye-popping .321 but never came within 50 hits of his 162 that year. Bailey, the first pitcher in this group, was a two-time All-Star and a relief pitcher his entire career.

2010 – The ROYs this year were a pitcher, the second relief pitcher in a row picked in the AL, and a very good catcher: Neftali Feliz and Buster Posey. Feliz retired before he was 30.

Evaluation

The selection of the above players could be evaluated in a number of ways, but one number included was WAR. We must keep the modernists happy, and once a fan accepts that he’ll never quite understand the granular calculation of WAR, the figure can be seen as not altogether useless.

How do we know this? Because it seems to work in consideration of the great Lou Gehrig, a player no one would dare argue wasn’t a superstar. The gold standard is Gehrig. His career WAR for 17 seasons was 114.1, or an average WAR of 6.71.

If this figure is lined up against Mike Trout’s average annual WAR, one sees the modern player’s figure is 8.08.

Good lord. Is Trout actually better than Gehrig was? We’ll check back in eight years and see, but for the moment, these two figures check each other: Players above 6.71 annually are extraordinarily good.

What other figures can be considered? Let’s take the player’s ROY-year BA or WHIP in relation to his career figure, and add in total career “awards.” Most of these considerations are, of course, fluid since all but five of these 20 players are still playing.

But the job is to say something about how good a predictor the modern ROY award is.

First, the WAR consideration: The leader among position players is clearly Trout. Behind him are the following, among position players – Bellinger (5.77 average annual WAR), Correa (4.90), Judge and Bryant (4.78), Longoria (4.67), Harper (3.98), Posey (3.80), Abreu (3.48), Seager (3.14), Myers (1.39), Soto (0.92), and Coghlan (0.12).

The leader among the pitchers is deGrom (5.92 AAWAR), followed by Fernandez (3.60), Fulmer (3.23), Kimbrel (1.96), Hellickson (1.17), Feliz (0.85), and Bailey (0.73).

And taken all together, what this says – so far – is that position players given ROYs are a bit more likely to turn into superstars or perennial All-Stars such as Trout, deGrom, Correa, Posey, Bryant, and Longoria, with the proviso that designating younger players like Bellinger a repeat All-Star is an iffier proposition.

Bottom line on the WAR consideration: Currently, the MLB Rookie of the Year awards have about a 10 percent chance to indicating a future, undoubted superstar – Trout and deGrom among these 20 players are the examples.

Several players, particularly among the position players, may eventually be seen the way many now view the most important Met and most important Angel.

Are there other considerations that might affect that evaluation now?

Our Other Data

The most intriguing of the position players are those above whose average WAR figures run between 3.98 (Harper) and 5.77 (Bellinger); all those figures indicate an extremely solid, everyday player who will likely go to more than one All-Star game.

The question is which of those six players is most likely to move up into the superstar category, to become a player who will definitely challenge for Hall of Fame consideration. It’s tempting to say all of them could, but what does BA progression from ROY year onward say?

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Film study and analytics are now part of every team’s attempt to understand how to control an opponent’s offense, but the ROY winners arguably have real targets on their backs. So, whether or not a young player adjusts to the rest of his league “figuring him out” could be a predictor.

Of the six players averaging between 3.98 and 5.77 here, three of them have higher career batting averages than the averages posted in their ROY years: Harper, Bryant, and Bellinger.

It makes some sense these three, then, are most likely to push into the true superstar category in more than a reputational way. Harper arguably leads the way since he is an eight-year veteran already.

A similar, progression examination of these pitchers shows only two of the seven pitchers in this group saw their WHIP figures drop as their careers progressed. It’s no surprise that one is deGrom, and with a 5.92 average WAR over six years, he may already be on the threshold of the Hall of Fame, assuming four or five more productive years.

Kimbrel, on the other hand, is already a ten-year veteran (with an average WAR of 1.96) who’s coming off a frankly lousy half-campaign in ’19 with the Cubs. He’s very likely to be considered a very, very good reliever, but not more than that when all is said and done.

An examination of awards was also promised, and no, this isn’t fair to the most recently selected ROYs. This is also why we’re not looking at the players honored for the past two seasons. What was considered were ROY, MVP, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, and Cy Young awards, as well as MLB (not league) leadership in BA, HR, RBI, ERA, wins, saves, and WHIP for given years.

Once again, the gold standard is Gehrig, who took 11 such honors before the MLB Rookie of the Year, Gold Glove, or Silver Slugger awards were even given (beginning in 1940, ’57, and ’80, respectively).

Gulp. Yeah, he did things like lead MLB in RBI with 173 in 1927 and 185 in 1931.

So, there’s that, and it’s fair to say that of the 20 ROYs here, only Mike Trout is likely to pick up more than 11 of the expanded honors considered here. He has seven. He’s played eight years fewer than Gehrig. Buster Posey has seven, but he’s closer to the end of his career than Trout in all likelihood.

So, what this all comes down to is a considered opinion that the 20 MLB Rookie of the Year awards given between 2008 and ’17 will have predicted two Hall of Fame locks once all these players have finished. One out of ten. That figure stands a chance of rising to five or 25 percent.