The Sporting News has announced that White Sox Gordon Beckham as their winner for the 2009 American League Rookie of the Year, according to Scott Merkin of MLB.com.
Beckham's splits, for a rookie, are impressive: .270 batting average, 65 runs batted in, 41 walks, an .808 on base + slugging percentage, 28 doubles, and 14 home runs - all in 108 games and 378 plate appearances.
By contrast, take those numbers with Evan Longoria's from the year before: .272 batting average, 85 runs batted in, 46 walks, .874 on base + slugging percentage, 31 doubles, and 27 homers. However, Longoria played in 122 games and had 508 plate appearances.
Let's take these two head-to-head and break the statistics down, shall we?
Beckham '09 RBI/PA - .171
Longoria '08 RBI/PA - .167
Beckham '09 BB/PA - .108
Longoria '08 BB/PA - .09
Beckham '09 2B/PA - .074
Longoria '08 2B/PA - .061
Beckham '09 HR/PA - .037
Longoria '08 HR/PA - .053
I think, on the whole, you can make an argument that Gordon Beckham in 2009 had a better rookie year at the plate than the much-touted, Peter Gammons chubbie-backed Longoria did in 2008. The statistics back me up for the most part: Beckham's never going to be a home run hitter, but you can see that he's a doubles machine and takes more walks than Longoria. I love guys who take walks.
Another aspect of this debate which is a critical point: look at the surrounding cast for each player in their respective Rookie of the Year campaigns. The
I ran a graph comparison between the two on FanGraphs, and the results look pretty nice.
And, on top of that, Bacon has the best walk up music in all of the Major Leagues. This is not open for debate:
So, let's not go out and have a Soto-esque sophomore campaign, Bacon. I don't wanna lose your love tonight. Congrats!
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Other points of note which I should cover while I'm busy typing:
- The Sox picked up Freddy Garcia's option for $1M, with $2M in possible incentives. Perhaps he gets some sort of bonus for sweating profusely?
- Matt Thornton's option was also exercised, at $2.25M. His next option will be $3M after this year, which by my logic is probably a lot less than Bobby Jenks will demand, and without that whole declining velocity thing.
- DeWayne Wise declared himself a free agent. I'm really glad he was there at the fence to save Buehrle's perfect game. That catch was awesome. But, on the realistic side, DeWayne Wise can't really hit. At all. Thanks for playing some D for us.
- The Sox are discussing a Podsednik deal. Somehow, the UZR ratings used to evaluate a player's worth if he goes to free agency graded out Pod's defensive play as "average". Clearly, the UZR rating system is in need of an overhaul if this is the case.
- Will they deal Jenks? Will they not? His velocity is on the decline, and he popped his calf at the end of the year, so methinks his value may not be what it once was. This is unfortunate. I also heard an interesting rumor regarding Jenks + prospects being sent to Tampa for Carl Crawford. Tampa could use some bullpen bolstering, and we could certainly use someone like Carl Crawford at the top end of our lineup. But what prospects do we have that can be used to balance out such a deal? I'm thinking this won't happen. Jenks supposedly wants to stay in Chicago, but isn't pleased that the team more or less called him "a fatty boom-batty." Yes, he's a total lard-ass. And he's out of shape. And he keeps getting hurt because of it. We'll see how Big Bad looks when pitchers and catchers report: your over/under is 290 el-bees. (FYI: I'm takin' the over.)
- Jim Thome: ''I'll be honest, I would still love to come back. I still care about the city. I mean, we're going to live there. Chicago's very fond in my heart. The time that I spent there, Jerry Reinsdorf treated me great. I guess we'll deal with that when this is all over with.'' I would love for this to happen. I'm a sentimental man. And I don't want to see him in a Twins uniform... because he would absolutely kill us.
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I had been hoping for an All-LA Series this year, so that the plot to "Colors" could possibly unfold before our very eyes, and possibly force Sean Penn and Robert DuVall into a squad car together to play good cop / bad cop amongst the chaos which would surely ensue.
"But you're just like them, Pac-Man. Nothin' but a gangster."
Anyway, it's looking more like Philly/Yankees, which actually should be a pretty good series. There's a bunch of great players on both those squads- not that there aren't on the LA ones- but it would be cool to see Mo Rivera close out another World Series game perhaps. Or watch Hamels chump A-Rod with that unholy changeup of his. I like the dramatic angle of Pedro starting against the Yankees again. And bad things could happen to Shane Victorino! We'll see. The Divisional Series were piss poor, and these Championship Series have been pretty nice.
I was also hoping that Thome could get his Series ring. That's not looking too good at this point. Come home, Slugger Jim!
