The #BohmROY That Never Was

Monday night the MLB announced their NL and AL rookie of the year. The Phillies very own Alec Bohm was one of three finalists for the honor in the NL. He wound up tying for second with Jake Cronenworth while Devin Williams walked away with the hardware. Here we are going to break down my thoughts on why the voters got this one wrong.

Across 44 games Bohm managed to bat .338 with a .400 OBP and 4 homeruns. In a stacked lineup, he quickly established himself as one of the biggest threats on the team. In fact, it’d be hard to find a guy around the league a manager would prefer to have up with runners in scoring position. He led the league with a .452 batting average with runners in scoring position. Clearly, Bohm was one of the most relaxed and clutch bats in all of baseball, a feat that is very rare for a rookie. Despite Bohm not starting the year in the majors he was able to lead all rookies in RBI’s. There certainly wasn’t much more Bohm could’ve done with his bat to bring home the hardware.

My main concern of competition for Bohm was Jake Cronenworth of the San Diego Padres. The Padres had garnered more attention over the season than the Phils as the “Slam Diego Padres.” I feared this could sway some voters. However many people pointed to the fact that Cronenworth had a higher WAR (wins above replacement) at 1.3 than Bohm’s .7 WAR. It is no secret that Alec Bohm was never drafted for his glove. He is a pure hitter and probably belongs more at first base than third. However, Rhys Hoskins is currently blocking that position and both bats are important to be in the lineup everyday. This left Bohm to post a -.4 defensive WAR. If we look only at offensive WAR, Cronenworth and Bohm are only .1 apart, which can be explained by the 10 more games Cronenworth played while Bohm sat at the minor league site. My personal opinion is that Bohm and Cronenworth split the position player which allowed Devin Williams to win.

Let me first start out this section by saying Devin Williams, a reliever for the Milwaukee Brewers, was absolutely filthy this year. There is simply no denying that and he deserved his win of the NL reliever of the year award. However, in terms of the rookie of the year, I feel his sample size was too small. Across 27 innings of work he recorded 53 strikeouts to only 9 walks and 8 hits. He only allowed 1 earned run all season with it coming via a solo homerun. There is absolutely no doubt that Williams was the best reliever in baseball. Though 27 innings doesn’t seem significant enough a sample size to beat out the impact that Alec Bohm or even Cronenworth had as everyday players on their teams. It should also be factored in that teams played the majority of their games in division with the few remaining games being in their AL or NL counterpart. So Milwaukee only played the NL and AL Central. Of the 9 other teams in those divisions, only the AL centrals’ Chicago White Sox finished top 10 in runs scored per game, coming in 6th according to teamrankings.com. In fact, the entire NL Central ranked in the bottom 10 with the Cubs at 21, the Cardinals at 24, Reds at 28 and the Pirates finishing dead last. Clearly this division was not a murderers row in the batter's box. I don’t bring this up to take anything away from Williams, but to point out that the hitters of the division struggled. My opinion is that given a longer season, it would’ve been likely that the names in each the Cubs, Reds, and Cardinals lineups could’ve gotten going and made life more difficult for Williams.

The correct outcome in my opinion would’ve been Bohm taking home Rookie of the Year with Cronenworth in second and Williams finishing third but with a unanimous reliever of the year award in his trophy room. Though unfortunately Bohm will not have a Rookie of the Year award to his name, he certainly flashed tremendous potential to be a star in this league. I can see myself a few years down the road sitting down to write an Alec Bohm MVP case and I hope then he can finally start his MLB award trophy case.

***Special shoutout to Deesha Thosar of the NY Daily News for voting Williams, Cronenworth, and ANDRES GIMENEZ?! Clearly no bias there just like there is no bias in this article***