NL Rookie of the Year: Dereck Rodriguez Being Disrespected

With end of the season awards heating up, Dereck Rodriguez is getting lost in the shuffle when considering the NL Rookie of the Year award.

While I certainly understand why Dereck Rodriguez might not win NL Rookie of the Year, for him to not even be mentioned in the running is a crying shame.

This is the NL Rookie of the Year award. It shouldn’t have anything to do with anything other being the best rookie of the year. Whether or not that rookie’s team is in playoff contention should not matter, and their predicted future shouldn’t matter either.

That’s the only reason I can figure why guys like Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler are being ranked above Rodriguez.

In my opinion, the race is between Ronald Acuna Jr. and Juan Soto. They are doing things that haven’t been done … ever.

Jayson Stark recently wrote an article for The Athletic giving his predictions for the NL Rookie of the Year award and Rodriguez wasn’t even in his top five.

He had Harrison Bader, Buehler, and Flaherty 3-5. Are you kidding me? How Bader even made this list is beyond me.

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I’ll concede that Buehler and Flaherty have been more dominant as rookie pitchers with 148 and 179 strikeouts compared to just 88 for D-Rod.

The one thing D-Rod has over the others is ERA, and shouldn’t that be the most important stat when calculating a pitcher’s worth?

I know I’m a little old school and am not big into analytics, but how many runs a pitcher gives up per nine innings still means something to me.

D-Rod has a 2.50 ERA in 115.1 innings pitched, while Buehler has a 2.76 in 130.2 innings and Flaherty has a 3.16 in 148.1 innings.

The fact of the matter is, Dereck Rodriguez picked a bad year to be a rookie. Almost any other season and he would be right there for the award.

Again, I know he hasn’t been the best rookie in baseball this year, but I hate the fact that he’s not even being mentioned in the NL Rookie of the Year award.

Hopefully he’ll be our best-kept secret in 2019 as he proves all the doubters wrong by building on 2018 and having an incredible sophomore season.