Over in the National League, there is a rich pool of candidates for the Rookie of the Year award. The American League is much, much thinner.
Top 10 2010 A.L. Rookies, Sorted by Patton $
| # | Player | $ | VORP | WAR | |||
| 1 | Austin Jackson | $25 | 1st | 1st | |||
| 2 | Neftali Feliz | $22 | 6th | 5th | |||
| 3 | Brennan Boesch | $15 | |||||
| 4 | Daniel Bard | $12 | 2nd | 6th | |||
| 5 | Danny Valencia |
$12 | 4th | 2nd |
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| 6 | John Jaso | $11 | 5th |
3rd |
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| 7 | Reid Brignac |
$10 | 10th | ||||
| 8 | Wade Davis | $9 | 3rd | ||||
| 9 | Alexi Ogando | $8 | 7th | ||||
| 10 | Brian Matusz | $8 | 8th | ||||
Other VORP Top 10: Carlos Santana 9th, Sergio Santos 10th.
Other Fangraphs Top 10: Carlos Santana 4th, Mitch Talbot 7th, Trevor Bell 8th, Casper Wells 9th.
The narrative in the mainstream media is Jackson versus Feliz, but Jackson is clearly a cut above Feliz, who suffers if you look at his raw value only and ignore the glittery save metric. I thought Jackson’s defense would push him higher up the WAR chart, but he’s barely positive here.
Jackson, Feliz and Bard are the only players here who played all year or were consistent all year. Boesch seemed like a slam dunk for the award in June but faded the rest of the way; he’s the quintessential example of value in Roto not translating to value in reality. Santana surely would have been in the mix had he stayed healthy; at one point he was outshining fellow catcher Buster Posey, particularly with the glove.
Austin Jackson gets my vote here, followed by Danny Valencia and then Daniel Bard. I was a big Andrew Bailey backer last year, but Feliz hasn’t nearly been as dominant and you can see it in the WAR/WARP1 metrics.
