Who should win NL Rookie of the Year?

i'm thinking Jason Heyward. Buster Posey could have possibly won if he played the whole year.

such a good crop

still have to vote for posey tho -- i think it's okay that he was called up late, can't blame him for organizational incompetence -- he's been most valuable & most consistent imo

i would rank

1. posey
2. heyward
3. sanchez
4. garcia
5. castro

went with buster. got a little heyward backlash in me. 20 hr outfielders *yawn*

Posey.

if garcia gets it in real life i'd be fine with that. but posey > heyward due to positional factors.

haven't looked hard at numbers yet

i went with Garcia. i'd actually had no idea how low his era was until i checked it just now!

was gonna go with Buster before that.

Tempted to pick Garcia but ultimately I think Posey is going to be the better player long-term, and is a much rarer commodity.

BP by WARP1:

Heyward 4.5
Posey 4.0
Garcia 3.8

I don't understand "long-term" being a factor; Keith Law talks like this too. It's not a psychic's award.

ya - that doesn't make alot of sense to me either. it's rookie of the year - not rookie of the future.

it is weird tho how many ROYs fall on their faces after winning the award.

above average hitting RF with a good arm/defense

vs.

far above average hitting C harnessing one of the best staffs in baseball who only played a fraction of the season because his team is managed by chimpanzees.

Posey

I don't understand "long-term" being a factor; Keith Law talks like this too. It's not a psychic's award.

That doesn't mean psychics shouldn't be allowed to vote, though! This is America!

are you now - or have you ever been affiliated with psychics?

it is weird tho how many ROYs fall on their faces after winning the award.

Chris Coughlan RIP

Posey.

heyward since i'm a sucker for elite OBP guys

stanton is my favorite though, dude hits the ball harder than anyone i've ever seen before, and he's still only 20 (!)

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heyward's had a very j.d. drew-ish season where a huge chunk of his value is wrapped up in the 'invisible' areas of walk rate and defensive range, so i won't be surprised to see him passed on for posey's .300 BA

its a toss-up stats-wise anyway imo as long as one of those two win

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I'd put Drew Stubbs over Castro and maybe over Garcia, but I'm a homer. Stubbs got off to a horrible start and was hitting like .200 in early June, but had a really nice second half.

I'd voted Posey.

Giants homers are the only people who should be making a case for Posey. Heyward has 36 more points of OBP and 180 more PAs in 34 more games. He's 4th in the league in OBP and walks and led his own team in both categories during his age 20/21 season. He leads Posey in VORP and WAR (both B-R and FG models) and wOBA and wRC+ and WPA. Posey might have had a flashier season, but Heyward provided more bulk value.

ciderpress otm iow

my problem w/ the bulk value argument is that you're penalizing posey for giants management being too stubborn to call him up to start the season, despite the fact that he obviously should've been starting at either C or 1B

Sure, and that's a great reason to call the Giants idiots, but the net result is he still didn't play those games! That's 50+ games where he provided nil value, because he wasn't even playing. It's not so much penalizing him, it's just electing not to reward him for only playing 100 games. Same reason you look at IP when picking the Cy Young.

I'm probably underselling him a little because he had a wonderful season and it's truly a very close race, but when I look at the 34 game gap I just can't imagine picking him over Heyward.

^^^

i can

he was basically the Giants MVP. i was sold on Howard until September happened

like they say: it not how you start it's how you finish. no one finished stronger in the NL, no one.

well that's a dumb argument

i'm watching the game, don't have the time to get into it

Posey gets Rookie of the Finish!

I can understand voting for Posey, because RoY isn't like MVP or CY where it should be rewarded to whoever plays best over the course of the season. Most rookies aren't in the opening day lineup, and even out of the ones who are, most of them don't make a serious impact and become one of the best players on their team.

That said, you can't give it to Posey just based on the "what if" argument, because that's like penalizing Heyward and anyone else who did play more games.

Posey gets Rookie of the Finish!

This is some strawman bullshit though, it's not like Posey was a September call-up.

yeah, yeah, yeah. i will get geeky about it when i have time. he had a 21 or more game hitting streak, a bunch of timely hits, hit over .300 for the year and arguably catches the best staff in baseball.

He is a fine player and deserving of 2nd place honors.

it makes sense to me.
obv at some point how many games you were around for factors in. it's just a matter of what number.

i was one of the two that voted for Garcia - but if it came down to Posey vs Heyward i'd have to figure out if the difference in plate appearances was greater than the difference in hitting.
obv its quite subjective and that formula will be different for everyone. for me it's close. very very close.

Yeah, I didn't even mention Garcia because I'm not entirely sure how to compare position players and pitchers in such a close race, or if I even should. I don't blame anyone who votes for him though.

's not like Posey was a September call-up.

Didn't say that! I believe Posey would've created more runs if he'd played the whole year. He didn't, it doesn't matter why, and even the positional difference doesn't close the entire gap.

But I'm saying that the "gap" (by which I assume you mean WAR) shouldn't matter for RoY like it does for MVP or CY. Yeah, I think it's more about "potential" and about who played better after they were called up, whenever that may have been. I'm not talking about giving the RoY every year to guys who get called up in August and hit like crazy for six weeks (like Franceour in his rookie season). Posey played two-thirds of a season and that's a lot of PT, more than enough of a sample size to say that his season was for real.

Like I said upthread, I think we have to acknowledge how difficult it is for rookies to break into Opening Day lineups for a number of reasons (some of them related to $$$ i.e. super two status and having *nothing* to do with someone's ability) and judge RoY accordingly. Otherwise, we're basically saying that a guy who doesn't break camp with the team has almost no chance of winning RoY (unless it's a really weak field).

I always thought that rookie SP's get overlooked in these votes, because a) it's crazy difficult for rookies to break camp as starters, and b) good rookie SP's are probably even rarer and more valuable than either rookie catchers or outfielders.

Posey takes IBA NL Rookie (I suspect the decisive votes were cast after the Braves got beat):

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12404

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