Today, the AL and NL Rookie of the Year awards were announced, and let me congratulate the Florida Marlins’ Chris Coghlan and the Oakland Athletics’ Andrew Bailey on winning the NL and AL awards respectively. Both players had excellent seasons in their own way, and were among the best rookies of each league.

That being said, the numbers suggest that they were NOT the best rookies. Here, we’re going to look a little more into some numbers to find out what players should have been in the mix.

Andrew Bailey

Bailey put up an excellent season as the closer for the Oakland A’s. Let’s get this right out of the way, though: here at Intro to Sabermetrics 101, we do not discuss saves as a meaningful statistic. Yes, Bailey saved 26 of 30 attempts this season for the A’s, but we do not consider this a measure of skill or production. This goes as well for RBIs. OK, let’s get on with Bailey.

In 83 1/3 innings this season, Andrew Bailey struck out 91 batters, walked 21 unintentionally, and gave up only five home runs. That equates to a strikeout rate of 28.1%, an unintentional walk rate of 6.5%, and a HR/FB% of 5.6% according to FanGraphs. Comparing those strikeout and walk rates to the American League reliever averages of 19.4% and 8.8% respectively also shines a favorable light on Bailey’s season. By all accounts, Bailey’s year was excellent.

So why did I say that he may not have been the right candidate for the award? This sentiment stems from the fact that, for the most part, relievers simply are not as valuable as starters, and there was a rookie starter this season who did very well this season. In fact, that rookie starter resides on the same team as Bailey.

According to FanGraphs, Bailey was worth 2.4 WAR, tied with teammate Michael Wuertz and second only to Chicago White Sox reliever Matt Thornton in WAR for American League relievers. If you prefer Rally’s method of determining defense-independent pitching (subtracting a prorated defensive value based on team defensive runs), Bailey comes out at a much more favorable 4 WAR. However, teammate and fellow rookie Brett Anderson came out with an equally impressive rookie campaign. Anderson’s 6.0% unintentional walk rate and 20.4% strikeout rate as a starter appear equally as impressive than Bailey’s performance as a reliever.  Sure enough, even though Anderson suffered from a bit of a long-ball problem, his FIP came out to 3.69, as compared to Bailey’s 2.56. As a general rule of thumb, we expect relievers to knock off one run per nine innings from their runs allowed due to their shortened workload, so the two appear to come out fairly even.

Anderson recorded 3.8 WAR as a starter according to FanGraphs, though Rally’s method yielded a less flattering 2.3 WAR. It may be a matter of “what’s your flavor” for determining pitcher production outside of defense, but it is definitely worth noting that, skill-wise, it appears that Anderson and Bailey were very close, and that Anderson’s playing time as a starter would win out. That being said, the AL argument seems more debatable.

There were other candidates, and it would be a shame not to mention them. Surprisingly, Texas Rangers shortstop Elvis Andrus did not get the award, despite the acclaim he received as a defensive wizard and the player who fixed Texas’ pitching staff. Thanks to Andrus’ +10 glove at shortstop, he was worth 3 WAR according to FanGraphs, which was well in the hunt.

Finally, I applaud the members of the BBWAA for avoiding Rick Porcello as their RoY choice. Porcello may indeed have a bright future ahead of him, but this season the best thing he did was put the ball on the ground (54% GB%) and let his excellent team defense behind him take care of it (Detroit Tigers’ team bUZR: +43 runs). Porcello struck out just 12% of hitters he faced, while walking 7.2% of them. In addition, despite the excess of ground balls, Porcello still allowed 23 home runs on the year, three more than Anderson in five fewer innings of work.

Chris Coghlan

This debate is something that I have raged over in my Marlin Maniac blog for quite some time. While pitchers such as the Chicago Cubs’ Randy Wells, Atlanta Braves’ Tommy Hanson, and Philadelphia Phillies’ J.A. Happ deserved consideration and mention in this debate, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen likely lost the most in this award nomination. In my opinion, McCutchen deserved the award over Coghlan, and the argument was based soundly on defense. However, the BBWAA does not vote on defense clearly, and this may have been why Coghlan took it over McCutchen.

We discussed in the glossary the concept of positional adjustment. The basis of it is simple: different positions vary in degree of difficulty, so the pool of players that can play certain positions is smaller or larger than others. As a result, we give adjustments for the value of a player having played in a more difficult position, based on previous players and how well they have done playing multiple positions. The gap between defense in a corner outfield and center field is 10 runs per 162 games. In the time that McCutchen and Coghlan played this season, that gap was almost eight runs. Without even considering the quality of defense between the two players, Chris Coghlan would have to have been six runs better offensively to break even with McCutchen.

However, the difference between McCutchen’s and Coghlan’s park-adjusted wOBA was about .004 points. The difference in their OPS was .014 points. This difference was a bit lower than what it needed to be to even Coghlan and McCutchen.

Then, when you look at the defensive numbers and scouting evaluations of both players, you can tell that there was a pretty significant defensive gap between Coghlan and McCutchen, not including difference in position. This should have made the choice between them more simple, but it seems that the BBWAA will continue to ignore defense or position and instead award the player with the better offense every time.

While I am happy to see two deserving players win the award, I can safely claim that they were, at the very least, questionable choices. Of course, this is the norm almost every season, so this one should be of no surprise.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Player Profile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.