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Why Gary Sanchez should win American League Rookie of the Year
Baseball has always been a game of numbers, but now, more than ever, the game is one of statistics. Complicated ones.
Every player has a quantifiable value, compared to the best- and worst-case scenarios, and a bunch of slashes that follow their names whenever they are written about, no matter the medium.
Stats rule baseball, but sometimes we're fair to be skeptical of them.
As of Friday, Yankees rookie catcher Gary Sanchez is hitting in such a manner that, if he were to have played a full 162 games, he'd have smashed 68 homers.
That's enough production to make all of baseball take notice, and there’s no question that it has. But no one — not I, a scout, a manager, a peer or Sanchez himself — could tell you if the 23-year-old Dominican would be able to maintain his current, Herculean pace over a full year.
But that’s a question we only have to ask in serious tones because of awards. Sanchez has 19 home runs this season but has only registered 166 at-bats. Is he on an extended hot streak that, had it happened in April, would have likely tuckered out in the summer, normalizing the numbers? Or is this, more or less, what we could have expected out Sanchez all season?
That unknowable question is at the core of Sanchez’ candidacy for American League Rookie of the Year.
But if the question was simpler than that. What if it was: is Sanchez the American League Rookie of the Year?
The answer would be simple: Yes.
Sanchez might not have even half a season under his belt, but his cumulative stats stack up against the best rookies in the American League this year. His percentages are absurd — he boasts a near-Bondsian 1.157 OPS this season, but let's ignore those.
Instead, note that Sanchez also is a full 3 wins above a replacement player this season, despite playing only 45 games.
Normally, Sanchez’ short-season candidacy would be buried by other elite rookies, but the American League has been particularly poor in first-year performers in 2016. His competition consists of Texas’ Nomar Mazara (0.6 WAR), Cleveland’s Tyler Naquin (2.1 WAR), and Detroit pitcher Michael Fulmer (3.03 ERA, 3.89 FIP, 2.6 WAR.)
While those three are strong players who should be Major League contributors for years to come, Sanchez is roundly outclassing them in baseball's new most-important statistic this season.
The argument against Sanchez is that he might not have been able to keep up his hellacious pace, and while there’s no definitive evidence that he could have, there’s also no evidence that he wouldn’t have done it. We can only go by what he’s already done, and while the sample size is to no one’s liking, that’s the canvas that’s been painted.
The cumulative numbers are more than enough to stand on their own against full-season rookies. The only thing going against Sanchez is editorialized extrapolation, which, given Sanchez’s incredibly positive start, logically trends negative.
Sanchez cannot win the American League Rookie of the Year next year, so we shouldn’t infer or project his production. This should be a face-value decision, and compared to the other face-value resumes, Sanchez’ stands out.
It really doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.
