November 07, 2005
Rookies of the Year
The winners of the Jackie Robinson Award were announced this afternoon with Ryan Howard and Huston Street taking home the prizes for top rookie in their respective leagues. I'm very pleased with Ryan winning the NL award over Willy Taveras. While Taveras collected 172 hits, 152 of them were singles. He walked just 25 times, meaning his .291 batting average represented a high percentage of his value. Howard drew more walks in almost 300 fewer at bats, and hit more homers (22) than Taveras had extra-base hits (20).
Street was also a good choice in the AL, although I thought Chacin, Gomes and Blanton should have finished in front of Cano. However, no one remembers who finished second. :-)
Street did everything well a pitcher should do well. He struck out lots of batters, didn't walk too many and only allowed three home runs. He held opponents to a .267 OBA and a .267 slugging percentage. He only threw one wild pitch all season.
Oakland earns back-to-back rookie of the year honors. It's the first time an American League team garnered consecutive rookie awards since 1986-1988, when Canseco, McGwire and Weiss took home the thropies. That was the start of four of five years in the post-season for the Athletics.
Posted by David Pinto at
04:07 PM
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Glad you called it the Jackie Robinson Award. I'm on a personal mission to never publish Rookie of the Year again without Jackie Robinson Award in there first.
Yankee fans are already screaming "we wuz robbed." The claim seems to be Cano's performance during the stretch run should put him over the top. Typical.
Maybe it's because he WAS robbed. Or it is the fact that he led all AL rookies in:
Average
Slugging percentage
Doubles
Runs
Hits
Multi-hit games
At-bats
The first two alone should have made him a shoe-in. Not that 23 saves and a 1.72 ERA isn't nice, but this is clearly a more impressive rookie preformance.
I'm a Yankee fan and like Cano alot - I hope he goes onto a Soriano or Jeter-like career, but Street was better.
Cano was good for a rookie. Street was dominant for any pitcher. In fact, in the time Street was elevated to closer (June 2nd), he was 7th in saves in the AL, 2nd in ERA among closers, 3rd in WHIP, 3rd in BB, and 4th in innings.
Cano was in the Top 5 for most offensive categories for 2nd basemen, but not as dominant as Street.
Cano: .297/.320/.458
Fellow rookie 2B Tadahito Iguchi: .278/.342/438
Was Cano even the best rookie 2B?
well, i don't mind that willy taveras had no power - he IS a leadoff guy. what i DO mind is that he had only 25 walks in 630 PA for a lousy .321 OBP, saw only 3.54 P/PA and that he hit under .200 with MOB.
howard DEFINITELY deserved it.
I'm not going to look, but there is no way that Cano had a higher SLG% than Gomes... Ok, I just looked... Gomes stats were .282/.372/.534 in 407 plate appearances... Cano was .297/.320/.458 in 551 plate appearances... I understand the positional difference, but Cano did not dominate the statistical categories... He ranked 8th in OBP among the ten rookies with the most plate appearances...
Regarding Oakland's two in a row...
Remember, 2002 ROY Eric Hinske and 2003 ROY Angel Berroa were once former Athletic prospects, too!
There's no way Robinson Cano was more valuable than Joe Blanton in 2005.
I think what David said is that he wishes Cano had come
in 5th instead of 2nd. And, that the upside of that is no one will remember anyway. You have to really dislike Cano to go that far. For the record, I'm glad a pitcher won it.
I'm a fan of Cano and the Yankees, and he clearly didn't even deserve 2nd place. 4th or 5th would have been right on, and nothing to sneeze at in this deep and talented rookie pool. I think that Street should have won and am glad he did, but really, any choice between Street, Blanton, and Gomes would have been fine...Cano's pretty good and all, and he mashed down the stretch, but all of these other guys simply had better rookie years. Street was just fantastic.