Parts I, II, III, IV, and V

Next in our review of the most overlooked players in award-voting history is Rookie of the Year. The ROY award was by far the most complicated study and comes with the most caveats.

What is a rookie after all?

The current eligibility rules are that the player enters the given year with fewer than 130 career at-bats, 50 career innings pitched, and forty-five days of major-league experience. These were set forth in 1971. This year, Lew Ford met the first two but not the third. The problem is that you have to work in the commissioner's office to be able to calculate major-league experience; the other two are readily available. I was unable to find the rules prior to 1971 but will continue scanning my old TSN Baseball Guides.

The ROY, like the Cy Young, was at first just given out to one player in the entire majors. In 1947 and '48 only one Rookie of the Year per year was awarded. From 1949 on, each league has its own ROY winner.

For this study, I will base eligibility on the first two criteria above (<130 ABs and <50 IP). I will lump all players together for 1947-48 and separate them by league for every year since. This will mean that players who were not considered eligible at the time (like Ford) will be included in the list, and I'm fine with that. I think that it demonstrates how esoteric and meaningless the third rule (i.e., fewer than 45 days on a major-league roster) is.

So without further ado here's the list:

I'm sorry it's so long but I wanted to include all of the overlooked rookies who actually finished first in their leagues in Win Shares (i.e., Rank).

By the way, here are the men who actually won in those years:

As a Phils fan, I have to love that Richie "The Hack" Hebner was ignored the year that Teddy Sizemore won the award. One can understand why the voters select, say, Willie McCovey, but someone has to explain to me how John Castino got a share of the award in 1979.

If one were to list these overlooked players by year, the result would be, as with the Cy Young, that large numbers of overlooked players occurred when the award was shared between the two leagues (four per year in 1947-48). However, early voting was lackluster at best overall (four overlooked in the AL in 1950 and three in the NL in 1956).

It seems that the new rules were instituted in 1971 because so many questionable candidates were getting the award and so many qualified ones were either overlooked or ineligible. In 1968 Reggie Jackson was completed ignored in favor of Stan Bahnsen, "The Bahnsen Burner", who quickly burned out his arm. (The Senators' Del Unser, later a teammate of Bahnsen in Montreal, was the only other candidate to receive a vote.) From 1968 to 1973 there was one "eligible" rookie that was overlooked but had more Win Shares than the actual award winner (i.e., eligible by my rules).

Since 1973 only three players have been overlooked/ineligible with more Win Shares than the award winner. One was Ford. The other two were Dwayne Murphy (1979) and Craig Biggio (1989) and both played at least 45 games the previous season even though they met the at-bat cutoff. Since 1990 only three players have made the list: Ford, Mike Lansing (1993), and John Rocker (1999). Rocker pitched in 47 games (38 innings) in 1998. In the 1993 NL voting, eleven players received votes (including Pedro Martinez, Carlos Guillen, Jeff Conine, Kirk Rueter, and Ricky Gutierrez) and Mike Piazza swept the first-place votes, but Lansing, then a third baseman with no pop who had not played a major-league game before the season started, was completely ignored.

I decided not to eliminate those players who had appeared in at least 45 games prior to their "rookie" season. They clearly did not pass the experience criterion, but I think it’s the silliest of the three rules. I mean, 130 at-bats and 50 innings pitched are pretty arbitrary numbers (especially for relievers as opposed to starters), but at least they are reasonable. I see no reason why Dwayne Murphy should have been ineligible in 1979 because the A's decided to use him in 60 games in 1978 as defensive replacement in the outfield and pinch-runner. He only had 52 at-bats for the season. I think these rules were outdated before the print dried in 1971.

I understand the need to set up some objective rule to determine rookie eligibility. I just think that Lew Ford, who had all of 73 major-league at-bats entering the 2004 season, shouldn't have to pay for it. I would prefer something closer to though not as stringent as the batting/ERA title eligibility rules. Let's say that a player becomes ineligible once he has accumulated at least 251 plate appearances. That is based on the batting title's 3.1 plate appearances per game and 81 games or half of a season. For pitchers, 81 innings or one per game based on half a season (that is for starting pitchers—relievers would be limited to something like 30 innings). I would eliminate the experience threshold altogether. Who cares how many days a player sat on a major-league bench?

Another alternative would be to keep the current criteria but extend the player's eligibility for another year should he receive no votes in the ROY voting. That would enable players like Ford, who met the criteria but clearly did get enough exposure to merit consideration, to have another chance. Throw 'em back—they're not big enough yet. Maybe the criteria that I outlined would be the ceiling for the players thrown back so that those players who just plain stunk their rookie year don't get another chance the next year.

Anyway, the last entry in this series will be study of how well the voters have done over the years based on Win Shares. I want to look not only at the high-profile cases where Mo Vaughn and Juan Gonzalez stole the MVP from Alex Rodriguez. I want to see how closely all the seedings match reality. For instance, someone has to explain to me how Bobby Abreu finished with three points in this year's NL MVP vote but J.D. Drew had 114 and finished in sixth place. If you say it's because the Braves, and not the Phils, won the NL East (an argument I find silly anyway), then explain to me how fellow Phils Jim Thome finished ahead of Abreu after Abreu had a markedly better season than Thome. It must be those 12 extra home runs (42 for Thome and 30 for Abreu). Then explain to me how Todd Helton and Juan Pierre both ended up with nine votes. Then there are the five points that were all that Melvin Mora received in the AL vote. At least he finished ahead of Chone Figgins. But I digress.

I'd like to look at how closely the voting totals per award reflect reality and how that relationship, or lack thereof, has changed over time.