10 Degrees: MLB's Year of the Rookie is upon us, and it is glorious
For all of football and basketball's instant gratification, there is something wonderful to the slow build of a baseball star, the level-by-level mastery so easily consumed thanks to the Internet, the excitement once a kid hits Double-A and his arrival nears, and the crescendo of an unveiling that under almost every circumstance underwhelms because it couldn't possibly live up to the expectations of the breathlessness it foments.
It is one of baseball's great pleasures, and 2015 has given us debut after debut worthy of hashtags, headlines and perhaps even a little innocent frothing at the mouth. Fans are rabid for their prospects, and the cup runneth over already, barely past the Ides of June.
So deep is the group that we at 10 Degrees headquarters must offer a pre-emptive apology for the limitation of this column. It being only 10 degrees limits us to nine names, and nine cannot possibly do even the elite of this rookie class justice. Joey Gallo, whose has the best home run celebration in baseball and is soon going to clobber one 500-plus feet, didn't find himself included. (So read more about him here.) Neither did Noah Syndergaard, the only pitcher who could compete with Gallo in a Home Run Derby and hold his own.
Here is the ridiculousness of the class: From the Top 100 list of Baseball America, long the bible of prospects, the Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 21 and 25 prospects have played in the big leagues already this season – 56 percent. That is more than usual. It is good for a whole season.
The reasons for it aren't readily apparent. Injuries prompted some promotions. So did the sudden contention of some teams with a cache of prospects. One general manager who promoted highly touted prospects this season suggested the acceptance of talent over experience by managers and players. Certainly the public knows more about prospects now than it ever has, and while fan reaction rarely prompts a team to deviate from its normal plan, the constant din calling for players can't help but bury itself in the subconscious.
Just last week, an official suggested …
1. Byron Buxton
could arrive in Minnesota as soon as August, and there he was Sunday, in his first major league game, scoring the winning run as the Twins jumped back to within 1½ games of first place in the American League Central.
Buxton entered the 2014 season as baseball's consensus top prospect, a 6-foot-2, 190-pound center fielder who epitomized baseball's five tools. His speed was game-breaking, his glove superlative, his arm outlawed in 27 states, his power potential palpable and his ability to hit for average strong. Even better, Buxton knew how to take a walk, and, best of all, he did all of that at 19 years old. If he wasn't Mike Trout, he was baseball's most reasonable facsimile.
Then came a lost 2014, injury after injury piling up, and still Buxton found himself either No. 1 or No. 2 on prospect lists, and 59 games at Double-A was enough for the Twins. If they're going to challenge for the Central title – still a proposition that reeks of dubiousness – there was absolutely zero harm in bringing up one of the finest talents in the game to chase it. The Super 2 deadline – a cutoff that covers the top 20 percent of every rookie class and awards players in it an extra year of arbitration – has passed. Buxton remains under Twins control through the end of the 2021 season. Now they get to sit back and watch him fly, like he did on his dozen triples this season.
As much of a surprise as the early arrival of Buxton was …
2. Francisco Lindor's time with Cleveland was long overdue. The latest shortstop in a bumper crop from the high minors, Lindor joined the Indians on Sunday, whacked a hit in his second at-bat and promptly fell on his face. Welcome to the major leagues, kid.
The shot into the right-field corner was classic Lindor. He's not going to hit 25 home runs in a season. He will steal bases at felony levels, snatch a Gold Glove or three at baseball's marquee position and get on base like a fiend. Today, that's a star. Considering it has taken all of a week for …
3. Carlos Correa to assert himself as perhaps the best shortstop in the AL, it's not exactly high praise. Jose Iglesias' glove is better, though his batting average is likely the product of luck, especially with fewer than 14 percent of his batted balls classified as hard hit. Xander Bogaerts certainly is better this year than last, and is doing it on the toxic Red Sox, but Correa has as many home runs as Bogaerts (two) in about 10 times fewer plate appearances. The best of the rest include Jose Reyes, Marcus Semien and Alcides Escobar, whose .255/.285/.341 line does not scream All-Star starter, which he's bound to be.
The 20-year-old Correa is a star. He looks the part. He acts the part. He certainly plays the part. With his second home run, an opposite-field job, Correa joined a short list of shortstops with that sort of power the other way: Troy Tulowitzki, Jhonny Peralta and Brandon Crawford. If there's an active archetype for Correa, it's Tulo with more speed and less glove.
And in any other year, that's the best player in the rookie class, hands down. Now, it's almost as though Correa is just another guy. He doesn't have the most power of a kid playing in Texas. At least he's got a shot at Rookie of the Year, an award that …
4. Kris Bryant might not win, either. Seeing as he's practically a shoo-in to play in the All-Star Game this season, and that it's well within reach for him to post the 13th .300/.400/.500 season by a rookie in history, that is rather incredible.
Currently, Bryant is hitting .301/.409/.492. The dozen in the club that have preceded him: Albert Pujols, the only one in the past 37 years, along with Mitchell Page, Fred Lynn, Minnie Minoso, Ted Williams, Johnny Mize, George Watkins, Paul Waner, Harry Rice, Kiki Cuyler, Benny Kauff and Shoeless Joe Jackson. So, four Hall of Famers, one who should be in and another who will be in. Nice company.
Once Bryant's power stroke gets going – yes, a guy slugging around .500 still hasn't tapped even close into his power – Bryant's full menace will reveal itself. He's still the favorite to be the best rookie in the class, even if…
5. Joc Pederson wins the award in the National League this season. He's got a strong head start, because as offensive as his sub-.250 batting average might be, his 17 home runs are more than double that of Bryant, his .386 on-base percentage rivals Bryant's and catches like this in center field sear themselves into the minds of impressionable voters.
Perhaps the best part of the kiddie revolution is the infusion of talent at skill positions like shortstop and center field, where the best athletes play and perform magnificent feats. In addition to running into walls, which Pederson seems to do no worse for the wear, it's damn difficult to strike out 76 times in 210 at-bats and still be a productive major league player. And yet Pederson has done just that. And Bryant just about the same. Almost every top rookie this season exemplifies the line of thinking that finally has woven itself into the game: a strikeout is just another out.
When it seems like every pitcher in the major leagues is coming with the arsenal of…
6. Eduardo Rodriguez it's difficult not to strike out a lot. The Red Sox left-hander, thieved at the trade deadline last year from Baltimore for Andrew Miller, gave up one run in his first 20 big league innings with 21 strikeouts. He looked like Boston's best starter.
And then Sunday rolled around and reminded Rodriguez that pitching in the major leagues is awfully difficult, particularly against a team like Toronto that has scored 88 runs during its 11-game winning streak. The Blue Jays dropped a nine spot on Rodriguez, which multiplied his ERA by eight, from 0.44 to 3.55. It wasn't quite the eight runs in one-third of an inning that Houston hung on Felix Hernandez the day before, but that didn't lessen its unsightliness.
Superlative pitching doesn't often reveal itself as immediately as great hitting does, especially with all of the solid arms in baseball today. Granted, this is a top-heavy class of hitters, and the best arms in the minor leagues are babies: 18-year-old Julio Urias and 20-year-old Lucas Giolito. Among Syndergaard, Rodriguez and…
7. Carlos Rodon, potential frontline pitchers have graduated to the big leagues this year, too. The 22-year-old Rodon is a year removed from the Chicago White Sox drafting him third overall – with the Brady Aiken mess and Tyler Kolek's struggles, him dropping in hindsight was a mistake – and has a pretty ERA of 2.66 despite plenty of fixable flaws.
First and foremost: Rodon's efficiency stinks. He knows it. The White Sox know it. His longest outing has been 6 1/3 innings. He needed 116 pitches to get through six shutout innings in his last start and he's barely over 50 percent first strikes.
Rodon also needs more faith in his changeup. He's currently a two-pitch pitcher, and those two are delicious: a mid-90s fastball and one of the best sliders in the game. He throws the changeup about 5 percent of the time, and while Randy Johnson and others have survived with just fastballs and sliders, they're the outliers.
Between the drafting of Rodon and Carson Fulmer this year, the White Sox have done yeoman's work in shoring up a rotation that beyond this season would've had Chris Sale, Jose Quintana and little else. It's the sort of pitching that makes the team up north jealous, even if the Cubs are so deep offensively that…
8. Addison Russell
, one of the great shortstop prospects, needed to slide over to second base. The thinking is Russell eventually will transition back there, though that thought existed – and perished – with Manny Machado winning a Gold Glove at third base in his age-20 season.
Russell hasn't been Pederson or Bryant. Hell, he hasn't been Gallo or Maikel Franco or Chi Chi Gonzalez or Lance McCullers Jr. This rookie class is so good that someone is bound to be left out. There are five Cubans (Jorge Soler, Rusney Castillo, Alex Guerrero, Raisel Iglesias and the .329-hitting Yasmany Tomas) and a Korean (Jung Ho Kang) doing various sorts of damage. Plenty of rookies outside of the tippy-top group have debuted to varying levels of success. Some (Trevor May and his 55-to-12 strikeout-to-walk ratio) were better than others (Kevin Plawecki and his .568 OPS), but they're all contributors, from Aaron Sanchez to Mike Foltynewicz, Michael Lorenzen to Vince Velasquez, Steven Souza to Dilson Herrera, A.J. Cole to teammate Joe Ross.
Hard-throwing relievers? Check, say Carson Smith, Keone Kela, Roberto Osuna, Yimi Garcia and the 100-mph gas of Arquimedes Caminero. Lesser-known guys with an impact? Chris Heston and his no-hitter say hello, as do moundmates Anthony DeSclafani and Nate Karns. Preston Tucker has hit for Houston, Delino DeShields Jr. gotten on base for Texas, and Matt Duffy stabilized third for San Francisco. Oakland is starting Billy Burns in center and Mark Canha at first. Austin Hedges and Wilmer Difo got their cups of coffee. Justin Bour drank his and got another. Devon Travis was the surprise of the early season. Jace Peterson and his top-of-the-order work for Atlanta is a strongly sustained surprise. Giovanny Urshela has formed a new left side of the infield with Lindor, and Eddie Rosario drove in Buxton to win Sunday's game.
All that, and…
9. Corey Seager continues to while away his time at Triple-A. While no promotion is imminent, the plan is for Seager to arrive in Los Angeles sooner than later and claim the starting shortstop job. Incumbent Jimmy Rollins is hitting .199, and while the Dodgers have opened up a 3½- game lead on San Francisco, a bat the caliber of Seager's – over the last month, he's hitting .330/.386/.524 at Triple-A – could give the Dodgers the best offense in the NL.
Others are coming, too. Cuban Hector Olivera, now playing third base alongside Seager, should join the Dodgers in the coming weeks. Had Urias not been sidelined by eye surgery, he might've threatened a promotion and been the first 18-year-old in the big leagues since Alex Rodriguez and just the second in the last 35 years.
Instead, the mantel of frontline left-handers falls on Steven Matz, destroying Triple-A hitters and coming to Citi Field soon to join an already-too-deep Mets rotation. And while they bolster themselves, fellow postseason contender Chicago could do the same by adding another bat with the slugging Kyle Schwarber.
Baseball today is a kids' world, and we're all just living in it, hoping…
10. Byron Buxton doesn't run so fast we lose sight of him. That's prospecting these days: crazy skills and incredible achievements and the realization of all that patience. Sometimes it's worth the wait.
It's why Phillies fans can see Franco and dream of the day next year when J.P. Crawford is next to him at shortstop and Aaron Nola on the mound. And it's why the Red Sox can stomach a mess like their 2015 season knowing their farm overflows with prospects.
Some will hit. Plenty will miss. That's how this works, and it's why even though Byron Buxton can play the hero in his first game – not exactly a heroic hero, but hero nonetheless – it will take years to understand what he and all these other players will be. Some like Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera distinguish themselves instantaneously – something it seems like Bryant is doing, frankly. Others take even more time to blossom, the seasoning of the minor leagues not quite enough as they ascend one more level.
In the meantime, enjoy the Year of the Rookie. As great as it's been, here's the best part: We've got another 3½ months of it.
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