AL Rookie of the Year

[Eris]

Royce Lewis is having a better season than Gunnar Henderson, who is the top candidate for AL RoY.  Lewis has a better OPS (910 vs 823) WRC+ (150 vs 124)  and BA (0.302 vs 0.257).

The major difference is that Henderson has 502 plate appearances vs 202 for Lewis (about 2.5x more).  In cumulative stats Henderson leads.  HR (26 vs 14) RBI (76 vs 50)  fWAR (4.2 vs 2.1). There offensive vs defensive splits are about the same in that both are offensive first player but not a liability on defense.

Lewis should be in the discussion as a RoY candidate. He is clearly out playing Gunnar Henderson  and should be given more consideration for RoY.

 

Current AL Rookie of the Year Odds: (from Bleacher Report)

Gunnar Henderson -215
Masataka Yoshida +330
Triston Casas +400
Tanner Bibee +1500
Josh Jung +7500
Esteury Ruiz/Royce Lewis/Edouard Julien +10000

 

 

[stringer bell]

Awards are nice, but what Lewis is doing heading towards the postseason is the story. He's not going to beat Henderson for ROY, but he might lead his team on a postseason run as a rookie. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

Lewis has to absolutely destroy Henderson's rate numbers to overcome that plate appearance disparity, which he's not doing right now.

[bighat]

Not gonna happen, but you are right, he does deserve some consideration. He'll probably finish behind all the guys on that list, simply due to sample size. 

We'll take a postseason victory over a ROY award!

[IaBeanCounter]

Not only is it surprising how well Lewis is doing with bases loaded, it's surprising how often he is in that position.  He has 12 PA out of a total of 222 (5.41%).  The rest of the Twins have come up with bases loaded 119 times out of 5,436 PA (2.19%).  He has come up with bases loaded almost 2.5 times more often than the rest of the Twins.

[Doctor Wu]

Yeah, the relative lack of plate appearances will no doubt doom his chances, but he definitely deserves some consideration, and a bunch of votes. Maybe another couple of grand slams will sway the voters!