Awards Season is officially in full swing now, as the BBWAA will be announcing the winners of their annual awards throughout the week. As usual, the ceremonies got started off with the BBWAA Jackie Robinson Rookie of the Year Awards and the flavor of this year’s edition was Central Divison-centric.
Indeed, Kevin McGonigle of the Detroit Tigers and Sal Stewart of the Cincinnati Reds ended up taking home the hardware for the AL And NL Rookie of the Year Awards, respectively.
When it comes to the AL race,
it was really no contest as McGonigle finished with 28 of the possible 30 first place votes on his way to becoming the sixth Rookie of the Year Award for Detroit winner — their first winner since 2016 which is when Michael Fullmer took home the honors. McGonigle finished the year with a slash line of .278/.376/.430 with a .357 wOBA, 129 wRC+ and 18 home runs while splitting time equally between shortstop and third base. McGonigle finished the season as the rookie leader in fWAR at 5.4, so it’s not particularly shocking that he took home the honors.
The NL Race wasn’t much closer, as Sal Stewart ended up taking home the honors in comfortable fashion as he received 20 of the 30 possible first place votes. Stewart’s award now makes it nine times that Reds players have won this award now, with the most recent winner before Sal being Jonathan India back in 2021. Stewart finished his year with a .263/.330/.457 line along with a .339 wOBA, 112 wRC+ and 32 dingers on the year. Stewart led all NL rookies in homers, but I will say that it’s kind of shocking that JJ Wetherholt not only didn’t win it but he also finished third behind Carson Benge as well.
With all of that being said, our very own Didier Fuentes did receive some consideration for this award. Atlanta’s top reliever (according to Walt Weiss, himself) earned two fifth-place votes in order to come in eighth-place overall in the NL Rookie of the Year voting, so it’s at least nice to see that Fuentes’s efforts on the mound this season (58 appearances, 73.1 innings pitched, 2.45 ERA (58 ERA-), 2.60 FIP (62 FIP-) didn’t go completely ignored.
BBWAA Awards Week will continue tomorrow night, as we’ll find out if Walt Weiss did enough to earn the honors of being NL Manager of the Year. We’ll see what happens then.
