The NL Rookie Of The Year Field Is Loaded

In my subscriber chat last week, a questioner asked which players I’d take as respective Rookies of the Year. While the race in both leagues could be interesting, the picture in the National League seems particularly fascinating. There are 10-15 players who could be legitimate threats for that award, a reflection both of an intriguing level of prospect talent and NL teams’ signing of a handful of players out of foreign professional leagues last offseason.

Let’s run through what is shaping up to be a strong class.

Jared Jones, Pirates RHP

Jones would be my pick for the most impressive rookie of the season’s first month. The Pirates right-hander has followed up an excellent spring with a dominant six MLB starts. He owns a 3.18 ERA over 34 innings while striking out nearly 32% of batters faced. Jones has walked fewer than 4% of his opponents, and while he’ll probably have a tough time maintaining quite that level, he’s getting opposing hitters to flail aimlessly at stuff off the plate.

Among all major league pitchers with 20+ innings, only Sonny Gray and Jack Flaherty have a better strikeout/walk rate differential. No one is inducing swinging strikes at a higher clip. Jones has surpassed 120 innings in the minors in each of the last two seasons, so he shouldn’t be on too strict a workload limit. The only quibble with his performance is an elevated 1.85 HR/9 rate, but the longball wasn’t much of an issue in the minors. This didn’t come out of nowhere — the former second-round draftee entered the year as a Top 100 prospect and trendy Rookie of the Year pick — but it would’ve been tough to predict this level of immediate dominance.

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