Why the Yankees' Gary Sanchez should win AL Rookie of the Year
Despite his limited time in The Show, the 23-year-old rookie slugger deserves to take home the American League Rookie of the Year Award.
Throughout Gary Sanchez’s historic start with the Yankees, the fervor has only grown. Still, despite the scorched-earth season stretch, a single, pressing question remains: How can a player who will appear in just over 50 games even be considered for Rookie of the Year?
The answer can be summed up in a single word: dominance.
Making history as a Yankee is no easy task, what with Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle littering the historical landscape. But in his first 50 games as a Major Leaguer, Gary Sanchez has not only surpassed the initial production of those vaunted ghosts of Yankee past; he’s screamed past the first-year accomplishments of all who came before him.
On Sept. 21, Sanchez solidified his place in baseball history. The young catcher blasted two dingers in an 11-5 victory over division rival Tampa Bay, giving him 19 homers in his first 45 games, which surpassed the previous record of 19 in 51 games by Boston Braves slugger Wally Berger way back in 1930.
While the Yankees wild card hopes have since faded — due mostly to an inept bullpen and a lineup gone randomly anemic — Sanchez was easily the predominant reason the Yankees found themselves 2.5 games out of the second wild card spot after that victory.
Sep 21, 2016; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; New York Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez (24) hits a home run during the sixth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
That night, an awestruck Mark Teixeira lauded the rookie with credit for keeping the Yankees’ hopes alive.
“There are plenty of words — amazing, incredible, impressive,” said 14-year veteran Mark Teixeira when asked to describe Sanchez’s streak. “He’s carried us. We are not even close to talking about a playoff berth if Gary doesn’t come up and do what he has done.”
Michael Fulmer has been very good for the Tigers during their own run at a wild-card spot. As of Sept. 29, the rookie pitcher held an 11-7 record with a 3.06 ERA and a 1.119 WHIP. But his peripheral stats yield a bit more gray. Specifically, Fulmer’s 132 Ks in 159 innings (7.5 SO/9) go to show the amount of help Fulmer has received from a Tiger’s defense that has played far better than preseason expectations projected.
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Sanchez, on the other hand, has been the epitome of dominance. His .311/.387/.689 traditional slash line — along with his 1.077 OPS, 179 OPS+, and .379 ISO — have been thunderous, calling the entire baseball world to the attention of the rookie phenom. By comparison (with an obvious huge discrepancy in sample size) future Hall of Fame slugger Miguel Cabrera has tallied a .313/.392/.555 slash line with a .947 OPS, 156 OPS+, and a .242 ISO. Sanchez will have to consistently post remarkable statistics over a number of years to even enter the conversation with a player like Cabrera, but the comparison proves just how phenomenal — in the quite-literal sense of the word — Sanchez’s numbers have been thus far.
Historic accomplishments aside, the one statistic used as a counterpoint to Sanchez’s ROY-worthiness may be the most basic of all: games played. Which, when comparing a young catcher to a pitcher, a position defined by its limited application, is ironic to say the least. Indeed, there has been a specific contingent within the greater baseball intelligentsia that has argued for years that, by virtue of their limited workload, pitchers should not be eligible for the MVP. That the same argument is being used to advocate a pitcher winning an award that is not the Cy Young only proves the seemingly perpetual ambiguity of baseball evaluations.
And while it’s true that Fulmer has been with the Tigers for an entire season, the reality is that his 11 wins were amassed in just 26 games. In seven of those games, Fulmer was actually credited with his team, you know, losing.
As such, it’s eminently arguable that Sanchez’s success over 50-odd games has had more impact on the Yankees win-loss record than Fulmer’s 26. To further illustrate this point, Sanchez holds a .796 OWin% compared to Fulmer’s .631 waaWL% (essentially the equivalent stat for a pitcher).
At the All Star break, the Yankees looked destined for an October spent at home watching the hated Boston Red Sox charge into the playoffs as AL East Champions. Hovering around .500, reeling from every cent of the bloated contracts handed out to players past their prime, Brian Cashman made the decision to dismantle the aging vestige of what once could’ve been a contender: trading Carlos Beltran; releasing Alex Rodriquez; slashing the playing time of Teixeira and Brian McCann’ and even breaking up a band — Run BMC — some consider the greatest bullpen ever assembled.
The Yankees decided to go young, and with that decision ushered in the age of the Baby Bombers, exemplified by a moonshot-blasting catcher who projects as a possible all-time great in the making.
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