스포츠토토 Los Angeles Dodgers right-handed fireballer Walker Buehler, 29, finished third in the National League (NL) Rookie of the Year voting in 2018. Despite going 8-5 with a 2.62 ERA and 151 strikeouts in 24 games (137⅓ innings), he received just one first-place vote. He was behind Ronald Acuña Jr. (Atlanta Braves) and Juan Soto (then Washington Nationals, now San Diego Padres) for the top two spots. Both players are outfielders.
Apparently, he’s still haunted by the disappointment. On the 17th (KST), ‘CBS Sports’ reported that ‘Buehler would like to see a separate Rookie of the Year award for pitchers and hitters, as there is one Rookie of the Year in each league’.
Buehler, who is rehabbing from Tommy John surgery last year and hopes to return next month, made the comments on the podcast “Just Baseball Show” earlier this week. “I think there should be a Cy Young for rookies,” Buehler said. I’m not saying I should have gotten it, but I was the third-best rookie behind Acuña Jr. and Soto. They’re both generational players, but they didn’t throw the ball, so who was I competing against? Let’s give the Fernando Valenzuela Award to the best rookie pitcher,” he suggested.
Since 1987, the Rookie of the Year award has been named the Jackie Robinson Award to honor the accomplishments of Jackie Robinson, the first major league rookie to win the award in 1947. Buehler’s idea was to name a separate Rookie of the Year award after Dodger legend Valenzuela. Valenzuela, who won the NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young Award in 1981 and led the Dodgers to a World Series title, had his number 34 retired last week.
Buehler’s argument is that the NL Rookie of the Year award unfairly favors pitchers. Aside from two-hitter Shohei Ohtani (Los Angeles Angels), only one of the 12 major league Rookie of the Year winners in the last six years since 2017 has been a pitcher. Reliever Devin Williams (Milwaukee Brewers) won the NL Rookie of the Year award in 2020.
This year, outfielder Corbin Carroll (Arizona Diamondbacks) is the favorite to win Rookie of the Year in the NL and shortstop Gunner Henderson (Baltimore Orioles) in the American League (AL). The last time a starting pitcher won Rookie of the Year was Michael Fulmer (then Detroit Tigers, now Chicago Cubs) in the AL in 2016. In the NL, the last was Jacob deGrom (then New York Mets, now Texas Rangers) in 2014.
[OSEN=Our Staff Writer] Devin Williams, Milwaukee Brewers. June 6, 2022 / dreamer@osen.co.kr
Jacob deGrom as a rookie for the New York Mets in 2014. /OSEN DB
CBS Sports writes, “Winning Rookie of the Year honors these days means more than just a trophy. The first- and second-place rookies of the year are eligible for one year of service time, regardless of how many days they’ve been on the active roster. If Rookie of the Year were awarded to one hitter and one pitcher per league, the players’ union would be happy because more players would be guaranteed service time.
Under Major League Baseball’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), which was signed in March of last year, the first- and second-place Rookies of the Year will be credited with one year of service time (172 days) regardless of when they are called up. This is to prevent cases like Kris Bryant’s (Colorado Rockies), who won the NL Rookie of the Year award with the Chicago Cubs in 2015 but missed out on a full year of service time by just one day, delaying his free agency by one year.
If there were a separate award for pitching rookies, George Kirby (Seattle Mariners), who finished sixth in the AL Rookie of the Year voting last year and was the only pitcher to receive votes, would have been able to complete a year of service time to accelerate his free agency. Last year, Kirby fell 21 days short of a full year of service time.
CBS Sports said, “Regardless of the service time implications, I like Buehler’s idea. I’m in favor of separating the hitting and pitching rookie awards. It would be nice to recognize the best performers at the plate and on the mound. It will be interesting to see if the Rookie of the Year award will be split between pitchers and hitters, just as there is a separate Cy Young Award for pitchers in addition to the MVP, which is almost entirely dominated by hitters.
[OSEN=Correspondent] Walker Buehler of the Los Angeles Dodgers. /dreamer@osen.co.kr
Kris Bryant as a rookie for the Chicago Cubs in 2015. /OSEN DB