Cano for AL Rookie of the Year? Not So Fast
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Like all other baseball awards, it would be difficult to explain to a curious but disinterested party exactly what the criteria are for the Rookie of the Year. The award is supposed to be for best performance by a first-year player, but it comes with an exceptional number of unspoken caveats. Most people, for instance, would vote for a 20-year-old who hit .280 over a 29-year-old minor league veteran who hit .300, because the award is understood to be on some level meant to identify the player with the best chance of becoming a star.
Add in the somewhat arbitrary eligibility rules and the fact that every year some 30-year-old Japanese veteran who’s about as much of a rookie as Jamie Moyer outclasses most of the real rookies in the league, and the whole thing is a mess.
This year, the American League sees a special absurdity, as the clearly deserving winner is 22-year-old Minnesota catcher Joe Mauer. A .300 hitter who’s walked as much as he’s struck out and played Gold Glove defense, he’s easily been the best rookie in the league and is obviously the one with the best shot at someday making the Hall of Fame. By all rights, he should be eligible, having had only 107 at-bats coming into this season, but since he spent most of last year on the major league disabled list after injuring himself during the first week of the season, he’s judged to have too much service time to qualify for the award.
It also sees the more usual conundrums. Chicago second baseman Tadahito Iguchi, who’s 30, probably isn’t the best of the eligible candidates, but given that he’s hitting .282 with 44 extra-base hits and 15 steals while holding down second base for the team with the best record in the league, you could certainly make a case for him. Iguchi, rightly, has almost no chance of winning the award, and wouldn’t even if he were having a better season than he is. By the letter of the law, though, he should be taking away votes from younger players with more potential who are having slightly worse seasons.
One of those is Yankees’ second baseman Robinson Cano. What you make of him against Iguchi depends on what you make of their defense; Cano has more power than Iguchi, and hits for a somewhat better average, but walks a lot less and doesn’t run, canceling out his advantages. Personally I’d take Iguchi – his fielding numbers are quite a bit worse than Cano’s, but I’ll take the man anchoring the infield defense for a team that’s run up the best record in the league entirely on the strength of its pitching and fielding. But reasonable people can differ here.
Even giving Cano enough benefit of the doubt on defense to put him over Iguchi, he’s still only the best eligible position player among AL rookies (Tampa Bay designated hitter Jonny Gomes and Oakland first baseman Dan Johnson are better hitters, but bring minimal defensive value, slotting them behind Cano), which makes two qualifiers. In terms of total value he’s at best as good as four pitchers: Tampa Bay starter Scott Kazmir (9-9, 3.85 ERA, 180 innings), Toronto starter Gustavo Chacin (12-9, 3.66, 191.2), and two Oakland pitchers, starter Joe Blanton (11-11, 3.60, 187.1) closer Huston Street (5-1, 1.66, 76, 22 saves).
Judging among these four, and among Cano, is pretty difficult. I’d cross Chacin and Blanton off the ballot first; they’re three years older than Kazmir, and their slight edges in ERA and innings don’t make up for Kazmir’s advantage in age and the fact that he ranks fifth in the league in strikeouts. That makes the choice one among a second baseman, a starter, and a closer, with all the various tie-breakers our disinterested friend would have a hard time understanding in play.
In terms of value, it’s roughly a threeway tie. Street’s ERA is very impressive, but despite his 22 saves, the A’s haven’t really gotten the most out of him by using him in a lot of tight spots. Moreover, Kazmir’s huge edge in innings cancels out Street’s edge in effectiveness. Cano hasn’t been quite as good a second baseman as Kazmir has been a starter or Street has been a closer, but an everyday player has so many more chances to affect a game that Cano’s overall value has been similar to theirs.
That leaves the big tie-breaker to come into play: star potential. This is where Cano comes up short. Because he doesn’t walk a lot, Cano has to hit .290 or higher to hold his own,even given his solid power and passable defense; it’s not a good bet that he’s going to continue to do that. Compare him to the Mets’ Jose Reyes, a superficially similar player: Reyes is a year younger, has stolen 57 more bases than Cano this year, strikes out three times as often as he walks as opposed to Cano’s four times, and plays an athletic shortstop as opposed to a somewhat stiff second. All of those indicators make one think Reyes can hit .310 or so consistently; there’s less reason to think Cano can. Add in that second basemen tend to peak early and lose value quickly, and Cano’s not a stock to invest a lot of money in.
All this said, if the Yankees came up with one player as good as Cano every year, they’d have a payroll half the size of their present one and a lot more rings. He’s someone to root for, just not the future Hall of Famer many Yanks fans seem to think he is.
Street and Kazmir, both 21, have serious star potential, especially Kazmir. The list of pitchers who can come right out of college and put up a sub-2.00 ERA while 1172 1144 1300 1156closing for a team in a pennant race, as Street has, is very short; still, I think everyone would take the starter who ranks fifth in strikeouts and throws 98 mph. Kazmir may not have been quite as good as Street, Blanton, Chacin or even Cano this year, but it was a very small margin, and he was that good while leading the league in walks; if he can focus on throwing more strikes, he could be one of the top 10 pitchers in the league as soon as next year.
He certainly has the best shot among this group of playing in the 2015 All-Star Game. If he does, he’ll be throwing to Mauer, the real Rookie of the Year. It may not make any sense, but like everything from the infield fly rule to the balk, that’s just baseball.