MLB: Awards 2018 – a battle of ideologies

Before the MLB Playoffs 2018 start in a few days, the question arises: Who were the best players of the Regular Season? Who should be MVP, who gets the Cy Youngs and who was the best rookie? SPOX-MLB editor Marcus Blumberg makes his picks.

As usual with these topics, we ignore the traditional mass statistics and focus on Sabermetrics. Based on this, there are basically six candidates for this award in the AL: Shohei Ohtani, Miguel Andujar, Ramon Laureano, Nick Martini, Ji-Man Choi and Joey Wendle.

Since the two A’s players made only just over 100 games in total, I take the two out, as well as Choi. It would be unfair to those who have played most of the season. So that leaves the Second Baseman of the Rays, the two Yankees and Ohtani.

Wendle is interestingly the WAR leader of all rookies in the AL. Among the remaining candidates he is probably the best defender and base runner. However, he also comes the least on base.

Andujar, on the other hand, certainly showed the best performances of all and was decisively involved in numerous victories of the Yankees on their way to the postseason. But his defense is really bad and he is 20 or more percentage points behind Ohtani in both the wOBA and wRC+.

Torres, on the other hand, got off to an outstanding start, but then had an extensive slump in the middle, which cost him a lot of momentum in the rookie race. His numbers are decent, but the competition was just better.

And then there’s Ohtani (2.6 WAR), who, as is well known, in addition to his unprecedented punching performance (153 wRC+, .392 wOBA are top among the AL rookies), also has a pitching of 1 WAR and is therefore on a par with Wendle in this category.

If there’s anything wrong with Ohtani, it’s the fact that he played 35 games less than Andujar and 25 games less than Wendle. And as a Designated Hitter, he doesn’t play in the field, so he can influence his offensive performance less negatively than Andujar, for example.

What voters will certainly consider is Andujar’s role for the Yankees. He saved his team the day several times with early hits. Ohtani in turn played in the sporting vacuum of Anaheim.

But: especially with rookies team success should not be so high. And who knows how much better Ohtani would have been if he hadn’t lost so much time with the elbow injury?

Fazt: Shohei Ohtani should be the rookie of the year in the American League!

Before the season it was clear that Ronald Acuna Jr. would take this title without much effort. And the Outfielder of the Atlanta Braves delivered and played an outstanding first season.

The “problem”: Juan Soto from the Washington Nationals did the same!

To be fair, Jeff McNeil of the Mets must also be mentioned, as must Pitcher Walker Buehler of the Dodgers and Harrison Bader of the Cardinals. The last two have accumulated more than 3 WAR and are therefore worth mentioning per se.

McNeil, however, has only played about 60 games, which is too little if the competition has at least 100 on their account. Bader is certainly the best defender and base runner in the group, while Buehler was probably the best rookie pitcher in the NL. But what Acuna and Soto have achieved is clearly above the competition.

Both of them reach more than 140 wRC+, which is the best value among NL rookies. In base running they are almost on the same level, their defense is at eye level, as is the general offensive performance (wOBA). Acuna has wafer-thin more WAR despite five games less. And he stole 11 more bases.

Soto comes more often on base, but Acuna has a better slugging percentage. You couldn’t have wished for a better head-to-head race.

Conclusion: If almost everything is the same what they did, then you have to look at the “Big Picture”. And then Acuna led his team into the playoffs while the Nationals remained on the spot. Therefore, my NL Rookie of the Year is Ronald Acuna Jr., albeit wafer-thin ahead of Juan Soto. Even better, let’s give out co-rookie-of-the-year awards!

Page 1: Rookies of the year

Page 2: Best Pitcher and the MVPs