Gary Sanchez has all of the numbers to be a Rookie of the Year candidate — except games played.
The Yankees catcher’s small sample size seems to be the biggest hurdle in getting his name on a trophy this winter.
Here’s the case for, and against, the catcher.
SANCHEZ HAS DONE MORE IN 60 GAMES THAN OTHER ROOKIES HAVE DONE IN 100
By Anthony McCarron
Willie McCovey.
There’s your precedent for Gary Sanchez winning the American League’s Rookie of the Year award this season, assuming the Yankees’ wunderkind catcher keeps up his massive power production, or at least something close, over the last two weeks.
McCovey, the Hall of Famer known as “Stretch” or “Mac,” won the NL award in 1959 despite playing only 52 games. But his remarkable production warranted it, just like Sanchez’s amazing statistics should garner this year’s AL version.
Sorry, Michael Fulmer, Tyler Naquin and Nomar Mazara. Tough break, Max Kepler. Sanchez is eclipsing them all. Heck, he’s already got more homers than Stretch did that season.
If Sanchez plays the rest of the Yankees’ games this year, he will have appeared in 54. It’s unfair to penalize him during the awards season for the Yankees taking so long to figure out that they’d be sellers at the trade deadline. When they called him up in May, they never should’ve sent him back down.
But Sanchez has done enough damage to win the award even if he’ll have played exactly one-third of the campaign. There’s no minimum at-bat or games played requirement.
Sanchez has 17 homers, 11 doubles and 33 RBI. He is batting .327 with a .399 on-base percentage and a .710 slugging. He was the AL Player of the Month for August and only Wally Berger (148 at-bats) got to 16 career homers faster than Sanchez’s 158 at-bats. Yes, you read that right, only one player did it sooner in a big league history.
Compare Sanchez’s stats to the freakish numbers McCovey put up when he got all 24 first-place votes back in ’59: 13 homers, 38 RBI, a slash line of .354/.429/.656.
McCovey had an other-worldly OPS of 1.085; Sanchez’s OPS: 1.109.
Yes, Fulmer, the ex-Met farmhand who went to Detroit in the Yoenis Cespedes deal, has blossomed into a dynamite starter, even if he’s slowed down a bit after a hot start. Mazara (136 games), Naquin (106 games) and Kepler (103 games) have been in the majors much longer than Sanchez and performed well.
But Sanchez has just been flat out better.
McCovey paved the way. He’s not the only player who’s been Rookie of the Year while playing in fewer than 100 games, either.
No one held it against Carlos Correa last year that he only appeared in 99 games. Will Myers (88 games in 2013), Ryan Howard (88 games in 2005) and Bob
Horner (89 games in 1978) are the three others who may have played a little less but contributed much more than other rookies.
Just like Sanchez, the best first-year player in the American League. Hopefully, the voters from the Baseball Writers Association of America recognize it.
IT’S CALLED ROOKIE OF THE YEAR, NOT ROOKIE OF THE SUMMER
By Julian Garcia
Not even a member of Red Sox Nation would argue that Gary Sanchez doesn’t give the Yankees and their fans so much hope for the future, especially when you imagine the power-hitting catcher in the middle of a remade Yankee lineup that also includes several other young studs, such as Aaron Judge and Greg Bird.
In fact, just this past weekend, Boston manager John Farrell lauded Sanchez’s abilities and impact on the Yankees, when he was talking to reporters before his team’s series against the Bombers up in Boston.
“They have one hell of a catcher,” is the way Farrell put it when asked a question about the Yankees overall.
Farrell is correct. The Yankees seem to have their catcher of the future. What they do not have, though, is the American League Rookie of the Year.
Sure, 17 home runs and 33 RBI to go along with a .327 batting average and a rifle for an arm give Sanchez just about everything he needs to win the award. Just about. The part that is missing for Sanchez is the last three words in the award’s title: “… of the Year.”
Let’s face it, baseball is a marathon of a season, and one of the most difficult feats in sports is maintaining a high level of production over a long,
hot summer that is part of a baseball season, which lasts six months and only includes about 20 off days. That is amazing, especially when you consider that of the three other major sports in the U.S., one is played once a week (granted, football is much more physically demanding) and the other two include three or four off days a week.
So, despite how amazing Sanchez’s accomplishments are, he hasn’t done it over the course of a full season, or anything even close to it. Other than a single game on May 14 (when he went 0-for-4 before being sent back down), Sanchez’s success has all come after his most recent call-up on Aug. 3.
Sure, the Yankees would have gladly signed up for 17 home runs from Sanchez if he had made the team out of spring training, so the fact that he’s hit that many in a month and a half and in just 162 at-bats is nothing short of spectacular, and he’s electrified the team, the fans and the city in doing so. But ask a rookie catcher to maintain that level of production over the course of a full major league season and see what happens.
And nothing illustrates this concept better than Sanchez’s main competition for the award, former Met pitching prospect Michael Fulmer, who had a hard time maintaining his pace to start his big league career, and he only plays once or twice a week. After a 10-3 start to his season for the Tigers,
Fulmer is now 10-7 with an ERA that still sits at 3.03 despite an ERA of 6.28 in his last five starts. Fulmer’s numbers in a small sample size were spectacular, same as Sanchez’s.
That is life in the big leagues, especially for rookies. And especially for rookie catchers.
Sanchez has been great. But about 60 games or so short of making him Rookie of the Year.
