If we’re being completely honest, the best rookie in the American League this season has been Brett Lawrie, followed closely by Desmond Jennings and Dustin Ackley. The Rookie of the Year race should be between these three future franchise cornerstones, but it seems grossly unlikely that voters will give the nod to players who played partial seasons only, even if their sabermetric stats like Wins Above Replacement (WAR) may dictate they were, in fact, the most valuable (and outstanding) AL rookies.
This is, of course, a shame, and an indictment on current CBA rules that more or less force budget-conscious teams to keep their top prospects in the minors to start the year, thus avoiding “Super Two” early-arbitration eligibility. By keeping Lawrie, Jennings, Ackley, and others in the minors until June, July, or later, teams can push their service time clocks far enough back to control the player for an additional year later on. While you can agree or disagree with this from a team management standpoint (after all, the Jays will likely lock up Lawrie to a long-term deal buying out his arbitration years anyway, and ditto for the other two), you can’t help but find the error from a moral standpoint - this is a system that hurts players, teams, and owners by keeping major league caliber talent off of rosters for a suboptimal amount of time. But I digress…
My point is that with these three (we’ll call them your MVRs or MORs for Most Valuable/Most Outstanding Rookies) will not be given the Rookie of the Year nod unless voters have a serious change in their standard views of the award. That makes the actual Rookie of the Year race relatively wide-open, and with that in mind I turn your attention to the candidacy of another Toronto Blue Jay, rookie catcher J.P. Arencibia.
More after the jump!