Before the 2019 season, it was preordained that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. would take home the American League Rookie of the Year trophy, and everyone else was just fighting for second place. That may yet be the case, but eight games into the prodigy’s career, it’s clear he has some catching up to do. Here’s a look at the top contenders.
- Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays – The game’s best prospect in years, Guerrero strained an oblique during Spring Training, providing Blue Jays a little bit of cover in their plan to keep him in the minors long enough to gain a seventh year of control. Just 34 plate appearances into his career, Vlad Jr. is fully expected to rake over the remainder of the season.
- Eloy Jimenez, White Sox – Jimenez was allowed on Chicago’s Opening Day roster after signing a $43MM contract, and he started to come around at the plate in his final 15 games before suffering an ankle sprain. He’s close to a rehab assignment and still has plenty of time to demonstrate why he was the typical prediction as the second-place AL ROY finisher.
- Brandon Lowe, Rays – Lowe owns a 153 wRC+ in 121 plate appearances, mostly as the Rays’ second baseman. His 1.5 WAR is tops among AL rookies. Lowe also enjoys the comfort of a $24MM contract signed back in March.
- Michael Chavis, Red Sox – Mostly playing second base for the Red Sox, Chavis made his big league debut on April 20th and has already smacked six home runs. Chavis may eventually be squeezed for playing time once Dustin Pedroia and Brock Holt return, though not if he keeps hitting anything like this.
- Spencer Turnbull, Tigers – If Vogelbach is the league’s most surprising rookie hitter, the 26-year-old Turnbull deserves that designation for pitchers. Rated just a 40-grade prospect by Baseball America prior to the season, the righty claimed the Tigers’ last rotation spot out of Spring Training and never looked back. He’s rocking a 2.31 ERA in seven starts, and even if that can’t last he’s shown himself a capable big league starter. Having tallied 135 2/3 innings last year and 112 in 2017, it seems unlikely Turnbull will be allowed to keep his current 200-inning pace.
- Yusei Kikuchi, Mariners – Kikuchi owns a 3.98 ERA in eight starts, including a gem last time out in Cleveland. Having made a large investment in Kikuchi, the Mariners have a plan to periodically give him a one-inning start, which so far happened in his seventh outing. That approach still might get him around 150 innings, so Kikuchi has a shot at the award.
- Ty Buttrey, Angels – It’s hard to ignore what the 26-year-old Buttrey has done out of the Angels’ bullpen so far. He’s posted a 1.06 ERA with 21 punchouts and just three walks in 17 innings and has been pitching in high leverage situations all year. Buttrey, who has touched 100 with his fastball, looks like the Angels’ closer of the future.
- Trent Thornton, Blue Jays – Thornton, 25, was traded by the Astros to the Blue Jays for Aledmys Diaz in November. According to Baseball America, his curveball features one of the highest spin rates in baseball, and he “has the stuff and control to fit as a No. 4 starter with a chance for more.” So far he has a 4.08 ERA and 9.7 K/9 in seven starts.
- Rowdy Tellez, Blue Jays – The Jays’ DH/first baseman has popped six home runs in the early going. If Tellez is able to approach 30 bombs in a lost season for the Jays, he’ll be in the Rookie of the Year conversation.
- Jesus Luzardo, Athletics and Forrest Whitley, Astros – Luzardo’s impressive spring and rotation bid was cut short by a shoulder injury, though the top prospect could return to game action in June. It seems unlikely he’ll get enough innings with the A’s to compete for the award. Whitley, meanwhile, has been knocked around in two of his four starts at Triple-A and may also have a half-season at best in the Majors this year.
- Danny Jansen, Blue Jays – Jansen has started about two-thirds of the Jays’ games behind the plate, but has been awful as a hitter through 90 plate appearances. Luke Maile hasn’t been any better, so Jansen should have a chance to shake off his April and finish as the league average hitter he was projected to be.
- Christin Stewart, Tigers – Stewart was off to a decent start as the Tigers’ left fielder before going down with a quad injury. He’s currently on a minor league rehab assignment and has the plus power to make some noise in the ROY race.
A correction has been made to this post, thanks to a comment from reader txtgab. We have confirmed that Dwight Smith Jr. is in fact not rookie eligible. Additionally, reader tieran711 has kindly pointed me to this tweet from Larry Stone of the Seattle Times, which indicates that Daniel Vogelbach is also not rookie eligible. Both players have been removed from the post.
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Pulling for Smith!
I thought Smith lost his rookie status in 2018. Although, still a great story for 2018.
Good Starts are a Dime a Dozen for Rookies,then the League makes a adjustment
Vlad has not done a thing. Lets wait a little bit before we start the HOF talks now baseball.
Yea let’s not forget Byron Buxton and Jurickson Profar, just to name a few.
Swihart!!!!
I think it’s really silly that vlad is winning this poll despite having dont nothing so far. I’m not saying he wont win it but he is definitely not the favorite anymore
Are we watching the same American League? Dan Vogelbach isn’t the best hitter in the one I’m watching.
Since he is leading the AL with a 1.119 OPS and an OPS+ of 205, yes he is currently the best hitter in the AL.
On a rate basis, the fact that Vogelbach has 9 HR, 6 2B, 9 1B, 23 BB, and 1 HBP in 109 PA while playing half his games at T-Mobile Park is why he’s been the best hitter in the AL so far. No one has said he will continue to be the best hitter in the AL moving forward.
That said, Vogelbach is not rookie eligible, so kind of a moot point.
Vlad wouldn’t even get nominated for the award, he’s struggling at the plate but of course he could always turn it around in time, let him develop into an everyday player that should be the focus
Ya, he’s been struggling at the plate, alright. The dinner plate.
Yes so far he’s been all hype by writers and reporters who should but don’t know better. His minor league numbers do nothing at the ML level and the latter is all that matters really.
If you base ANY opinion on an 8 game sample, then you don’t need to write your opinion down anywhere. Get out of these threads, time-waster. Grow up.
Kind of like the 1500 people that have voted for Vlad Jr. so far,
What about La Tortuga?? Willians Astudillo for ROY
Bartolo Jr needs to get back on the field before we start talking about ROY
It’s great to see so many candidates that are a part of the Blue Jays club. The hype is high for Vladdy, but so far he had one RBI…hopefully he’ll get hot soon.
Does Dwight Smith Jr. even qualify for ROY?, great story, he’s an incredible fastball hitter… but his bref page has him exceeding rookie limits in 2018
You raise a good point! FanGraphs lists him as a rookie but he may have exceeded 45 days on the active roster last year. I will get a definitive answer.
Good call – I’ve confirmed that Dwight Smith Jr. is not rookie eligible.
Don’t sleep on John Means!
Over in Baltimore, he’s an unranked(even in the O’s awful system) prospect who has perfected a spiffy changeup and is doing very well!
It’s a long season, Guerrero can get hot and make everyone forget about his first 20 games. I don’t see a pitcher winning it. With pitch counts and inning counts for these young guys now, they get shut down late in the year and people forget about what they did earlier in the year. Vogelbach has always been a high OBP guy with power potential. It’s nice to see him hitting some home runs now.
Per Mark Polishuk on this very site last night:
Eloy Jimenez’s high ankle sprain was seemingly going to put the young slugger out of action until mid-May, though MLB.com’s Scott Merkin reports (Twitter link) that Jimenez will now travel with the White Sox for their four-game series in Cleveland beginning on Monday. As Merkin describes things, it is a “much much better scenario….[than] it first looked upon injury.” It seems as though Jimenez will be able to avoid a minor league rehab stint and could end up spending only the 10-day minimum on the IL, though the Sox will obviously be as cautious as possible with their top prospect.
Btw-Jimenez was placed on the 10-day injured list on April 28th, retroactive to April 27. If my math is correct he will technically be eligible for activation tomorrow (Tuesday). The White Sox do have two roster moves that will be announced prior to today’s game against the Tribe after optioning OF Adam Engel and LHP Caleb Frare to AAA Charlotte following yesterday’s contest versus the Red Sox.
link to twitter.com
A sensible approach. No White Sox fan wants to see Jimenez come back too quickly and exacerbate this injury. His presence in Cleveland must be to keep an eye on his progress as he continues to do some hitting and throwing without the running.
Regarding the two pending transactions this just in from the White Sox per a press release: link to mlb.com
Does anyone really think Jimenez is a ROY candidate? Really? Have you seen him hit? I know, I know. He’s an hyped prospect. Can’t miss. Good luck to him, but ROY? Really? They say the Sox never promote a player until he’s done everything on their development agenda. I suggest that before promotion every player stand in the box and lay off a thousand breaking balls outside and bouncing in the dirt. Maybe the coaching staff could show each hitter a video loop of the spin on that breaking ball until the hitter shows he can recognize the pitch and lay off it.
I do, although I did vote for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in this poll.
Eloy Jimenez did everything the White Sox asked of him, at least as a hitter as he progressed through their system. He was the rare power hitter who also hit for average and to all fields. This was the result of being a selective hitter with a decent knowledge of his own strike zone.
Jimenez has seen a steady diet of breaking balls since his MLB debut. If he’s as smart a hitter as the scouts and organization believe, he should adjust sooner rather than later. The glimpses we have seen of Jimenez show that he can spread his power around with his 3 HR’s landing in LF, CF and RF, his first two coming in the same game at Yankee Stadium and his last in Detroit.
Not sure where all this hostility is coming from. I enjoy polls like this. Nothing too serious just a discussion topic to fill time on a slow baseball day. I agree there could be other player options on the poll including your boy Bichette. But I also see what Tim was getting at. This list has the usual big name youngsters, the older rookies finally getting their shot, surprise performers who are sure to regress. Just enjoy it guy.
soooooo – I guess its not too early for this poll and evidently if you think it is your post disappears. I’m hoping my post didn’t get lumped in with the obnoxious claptrap MJ posted directly before me and that no offense was taken.. just trying to state my point thats all.
I’m not trying to be combative, but if your point was “I don’t think this post that was already published should have been written,” why even write that? I do take offense when we write something and someone leaves the cliche “slow news day” comment.
My point was taking a poll on who do you think is going to win ROY 33 games into the season seemed premature. I probably should not have included the ” slow news day” cliche as I can see how that could be taken as more obnoxious rather than a semi humorous throw away comment it was meant to be. I’ve seen far worse attacks on you and your writers in the comment section left up but no worries I’ll chalk it up to a misunderstanding – have a great rest of your day Tim – no offense was meant. I enjoy the site but will stick to just reading the articles and skip the comments
According to MLB.com, Vogelbach is not rookie eligible anymore.
There had been some thought that Daniel Vogelbach still qualifies as a rookie, because he began year under the 130 AB cutoff. But Elias has clarified that Vogelbach is not a rookie because of service time (days on MLB roster during 25-man limit)
link to twitter.com
Another excellent catch, I did not know that either. Further editing!
I’m really hoping the Indians promote Oscar Mercado soon, because he’s shown that he’s pretty much ready.
He won’t win Rookie of the Year or probably even come close to it, but he could be one of the other candidates at the back end of this list if it gets re-posted later in the year.
I vote Lowe or that kid from Boston if it were today.
I agree with the Lowe pick. Leading all AL rookies in WAR (9th overall in the entire AL field) and already pulled down a Rookie of the Month award. His to lose at this point with a lot of baseball to be played.
Yeah, if the voting were held today Lowe should be the choice.
I take it that Meadows isn’t considered a rookie?
Is Domingo German ineligible for ROY?
He threw a lot of innings in 2018 if I remember correctly, but he was under 100 before this year.
I was thinking the same thing — but he threw 85 innings last year — Over 50 is the Rookie qualifier for pitchers.
Classic baseball writers, focus primarily on the guys with the big names. Maybe Eloy and Vlad end up the two best rookies this year–but as for now, they are not. Brandon Lowe is a hot hitter on the AL’s best team, and currently should be the one to beat.
I think MLB’s rookie qualifications are sensible, but are also quite confusing. BBRef still says Vogelbach is a rookie, as they did with Montas last year. no one really seems to ever be sure.
Oh come now. It’s Lowe, and it’s not even close. Not only is the bat playing (which most scouts thought it would), but the defense at 2B has been better than he ever showed in the minors. And he plays alongside of Adames, whose a horror show.
It’s early yet of course, but it’s Lowe by a country mile.
If the season ended now, Lowe would win. the only reason the other two would be higher is the speculation that they will preform better in the coming months then they have so far.
Lowe is also K’ing at a 33% clip and sporting a .422 BABIP. Lowe would win it by a country mile today but he’s shown real signs of regression coming. I think he’s going to be a very solid player but there’s a very real chance he gets caught. His K rate and walk rate are down from last years showing. If there’s no improvement in that area he’s going to be more of that player moving forward. Which still may be enough in a rather weak pool this year given his hot start.
BTW he had a 148 PA’s last year but luckily he walked enough to only record 129 ABS. Which really shows how arbitrary the lines for this award are.
Solid points, but BABIP just doesn’t mean much anymore; their isn’t a MLB infield that just doesn’t plain stink (D-Backs and Angels maybe; that’s it).
But the silliness of the computation is valid, as is Lowe’s high K rate. But perusing his background, Lowe seems able to adjust to things pretty well; I think he’s got a pretty good shot.
That feel when you have to update your article from 15 early contenders to 13 early contenders because you don’t even bother to put in the effort to determine who’s actually a rookie in 2019.
Lol
Generally FanGraphs has served me well as reference material. But I have a feeling their Rookie checkbox on their leaderboards does not take into account the service time component of rookie eligibility. Lesson learned!
I’m very intrigued by Chavis. I didn’t think he would make this big of an impact or this quickly.
Michael Chavis is a big part of the BoSox surge. Eduardo Nunez and Dustin Pedroia better not take away his playing time.
Other AL rookie impact players:
NYY UT Thairo Estrada
KCR 3B Kelvin Guitierrez, RP Scott Barlow
BAL RP John Means
Has not seen MLB, but Yordan Alvarez’s AAA numbers should not be ignored. Reddick, please slump.
HOU AAA LF/1B Yordan Alvarez is having a great offensive season. He certainly deserves to be called up this season However, I think Tony Kemp will be the player to lose his job. As for Josh Reddick, he is hitting well and plays excellent defense.
Alvarez should see playing time to prepare for the possible loss of George Springer to free agency after this season. Alvarez will likely be a full time player in 2021; the contracts of Reddick, Michael Bradley and Yuli Gurriel expire end of 2020.
What about Gio Urshela? I think he’s having a lot more impact than Estrada. Estrada only has 21 plate appearances so far — Urshela has 71 and a 0.913 OPS. Doing a good job at third as well.
Stupid me — had not realized he played quite a bit for Cleveland a couple of years back.
How about John Means?
3-3, 2.87 ERA, 25.2 IP. 23 K’s. 7 BB’s. 1..17 WHIP. 8.8 K/9. 3.57 K/BB Considering the O’s have only won 12 games, Means has 1/4 of their wins.
4.51 FIP 4.65 xFIP and he’s only thrown 25.2
Innings. For an orioles pitcher to win ROY he’d have to be pretty special. He could’ve potentially got a mention but I dont think he would’ve deserved many votes thus far. I don’t expect turnbull or Kikuchi to take it home either but I don’t have any problems listing those 2 ahead of means right now
Is Clint Frazier ineligible for ROY?
Vogelbach — Baseball Reference has him still eligible in 2019.
link to baseball-reference.com
“Rookie Status: Still Intact through 2019”
Give it another week & Kelvin Gutierrez very well might be in the conversation after this past weeks worth of games….
Cannot fathom how much a moron one would have to be to literally say “Vlad has stunk in 8 games that means he’s terrible forever” but I guess thats the mental capacity of commenters in here now. Sigh.
My one question to you is: how are you so dumb to write that and post it, but smart enough to know how to use the internet in the first place?
Shows how lost the Angels direction is… They have Ty Buttrey and not a clue of what to do with him.
Vlad Jr. has been unlucky, while his spike in strikeout percentage is much higher then anticipated he has been unlucky on balls in play. He has hit a lot of balls really hard with nothing to show for it. My guess is he is going to get really hit soon he still is walking at a high rate and expect his K numbers to drop. In short he has hit the ball hard but been unlucky and that will change. He is going to be a great hitter.
I saw him go down on three pitches today. He looked absolutely lost. My bet is – he’ll be destroying ML pitching soon enough… hes just getting his bearings.
“Just 34 plate appearances into his career…” yet the first name listed under “13 Early Contenders For American League Rookie Of The Year”
wtaf
Does Brandon Lowe qualify? Isn’t the rule 130 at bats or 45 “days” on the major league rosters?
He had 129 at bats but 148 plate appearances last year. Should they consider plate appearances instead of at bats? And he played in 43 “games”… he was probably on the roster for more than 45 “days” with rain outs or off days included. His first game was August 5th… the last game of the year was Sept 30th. 26 and 30 is 56 “days”.
Its 130 AB; 50 IP or 45 D on the 25-player roster.
He was on the roster for 56 days…. but in the fine print, he was only on the 25 man roster for 26 days because on Sept 1st it became a 40 man roster. DOH!!!
45 Days on the 25Man roster. September Callups don’t count for rookie time as the roster is more then 25 players then.
Its a little off subject. There’s more rookies in both leagues; I feel these are worth noting. This list changes every week:
C TBR Michael Perez
C MIA Chad Wallach
C ARI Carson Kelly
C TOR Danny Jansen
C SDP Francisco Mejia
1B ARI Christian Walker
1B NYM Pete Alonso
1B TBR Nate Lowe
2B TBR Brandon Lowe
2B BOS Michael Chavis
2B CIN Josh VanMeter
3B TOR Vlad Guerrero
3B KCR Kelvin Gutierrez
3B SDP Ty France
SS SDP Fernando Tatis
SS WAS Carter Keiboom
SS PIT Cole Tucker
LF CHI Eloy Jiminez
LF Christian Stewart
CF WAS Victor Robles
CF CIN Senzel, Nick
RF LAD Alex Verdugo
DH TOR Rowdy Tellez
UT NYY Thairo Estrada
SPR SDP Chris Paddack
SPR DET Spencer Turnbull
SPR ATL Mike Soroka
SPL SEA Yusei Kukuchi
SPL SDP Nick Margevicius
RPR LAA Ty Buttrey
RPR MIA Nick Anderson
RPR KCR Scott Barlow
RPL BAL John Means
RPR SDP Scott Wingenter
RPR ARI Yoan Lopez
Good effort & list…
Shots out to tha 2 readers. Represent!!
Charlie Tilson!
Maybe the ChiSox will get lucky but, Charlie Tilson is probably a stop-gap. Maybe they will call up AA OF Luis Roberts by end of the season.
2019 AL Rookie of the Year will be Yordon Alvarez. You heard it here first.