SHO STEALER! ANDUJAR ROBBED OF AL R.O.Y
Yanks get it from both sides as slugging pitcher Ohtani tops Andujar for Rookie of the Year
Ididn’t have a vote for AL Rookie of the Year this year, but if I did I would have cast it for Miguel Andujar. It would have been easy to fall victim to the hype machine, or to be seduced by the uniqueness of Shohei Ohtani, a pitcher who can hit, or a hitter who can pitch. Take your pick.
And clearly, a lot of my colleagues in the Baseball Writers Association did, because Ohtani won in a landslide, getting 25 of 30 first-place votes. Andujar got the other five.
Ohtani was a phenomenon, no doubt about it, and fun to watch for as long as he was healthy enough to stay on the field.
And honestly, I can’t even feign outrage at the voting. Ohtani is a fine choice, and his selection over Andujar isn’t nearly as annoying as Yankees manager Aaron Boone failing to find a single at-bat for Andujar, who led his team in extra-base hits, in Game 4 of the ALDS against the Red Sox, which turned out to be the last Yankee game of the season. But there are several factors that tipped the scale toward Andujar for me.
For one thing, coming into 2018 Ohtani had five very good seasons in the Japan Pacific League, a major league in every respect. Andujar had seven big-league at-bats and one full season of Triple-A ball to his credit. I’m not going to argue the fatuous point that players coming out of the Japanese league shouldn’t qualify for the Rookie of the Year award. The rule is the rule and we have to live with it.
But clearly, one player, Ohtani, merely lived up to his hype. The other, Andujar, didn’t have any hype to live up to.
One of the most highly sought-after Japanese free agents, Ohtani was supposed to be good. Andujar wasn’t even supposed to be on the roster.
I know this isn’t supposed to factor into the decision, but I believe it should count for something.
And while I deny any proYankees bias – I grew up a Mets fan in a household that hated the Yankees because of their annual tormenting of my dad’s beloved Brooklyn Dodgers – I must admit that I tend to favor the players that I see most often. And having covered about 80 Yankees games in 2018, I saw a heck of a lot more of Andujar than I did of Ohtani. And the one series I did get to see Ohtani play in person, he had a miserable weekend, going 0-for-9 with five strikeouts when the Angels came to Yankee Stadium in May.
What I saw of Ohtani on highlights shows was impressive, however. He has a great, violent swing and plenty of life on his pitches.
It’s not Ohtani’s fault that he got hurt, but when all is said and done, Ohtani had a great half-season, starting 82 games at DH and another 10 as a starting pitcher. Andujar wound up playing 149 games, second only to Giancarlo Stanton’s 158, and all but 14 of them at third base.
So when we start comparing stats, let’s remember that it’s much tougher to carry quality numbers over an entire season, as Andujar did, than it is over 104 games, 22 of which were pinch-hitting appearances.
In those 149 games, Andujar led the Yankees with 47 doubles, better than all but three other players in baseball and better than all but four players in Yankees history, fellows named Gehrig, Mattingly, Cano and Soriano. He also hit 27 home runs, thirdhighest by a rookie in Yankees history, and led his team with 76 extra-base hits, three more than Stanton, who was coming off an MVP season.
And for a free-swinger, Andujar was surprisingly difficult to strike out; he was fanned 97 times in 573 at-bats, or five fewer than Ohtani, who came to the plate nearly 250 fewer times.
And please spare me the Babe Ruth comparisons; what Ohtani did was impressive relative to his era, when AL pitchers can’t even lay down a bunt, but not nearly comparable to what Ruth did relative to his era.
In 1919, the Ruth season that most closely corresponds to Ohtani’s 2018, he not only started 15 games, he completed 12 of them and went 9-5 with a 2.97 ERA. He also racked up a save. In addition,
he started 111 games in the outfield and led the AL in home runs (29), RBI (113), runs (103), OBP (.457) and OPS (1.114). The runner-up in home runs that season hit 12.
By contrast, Ohtani plays in an era in which home runs are a dime a bushelful. He hit 22 of them – and 76 other majorleaguers hit at least that many, or many more.
Yes, Ohtani’s on-base percentage and OPS were higher than Andujar’s, but again, his workload was half of Andujar’s, and with the exception of his 10 appearances as a starting pitcher, he never played the field.
Which, of course, is one of the arguments against voting for Andujar, the fact that his third base play was, shall we say, a bit ragged. That was the reason he was not expected to make the Yankees roster, and in fact had Brandon Drury not wound up on the DL with blurred vision, might never have seen the inside of Yankee Stadium at all except as a September call-up.
Instead, he was thrust into a key spot in the lineup of a team from which big things were expected and daily performance demanded. Over the second half of the season, Andujar batted either third, fourth or fifth in a lineup that featured Stanton, Aaron Judge, last year’s Rookie of the Year, and Didi Gregorius. By that point, he was no longer being looked at as a rookie, but an indispensable part of the Yankees lineup, which only makes Boone’s inability to work him into the decisive game that much more puzzling.
Certainly, he would have made a better choice to send up in the ninth inning than Stanton, who turned in an awful at-bat against Craig Kimbrel and derailed what might have been a game-winning, and series-extending, rally.
And on my ballot, he would have made a better Rookie of the Year candidate than Ohtani. But I didn’t have a ballot this year, just an argument.
Ohtani vs. Andujar makes a great argument, and whichever side you choose is a good one.