November 1, 2019

By Neil Munro

Canadian Baseball Network

Now that the Washington Nationals have celebrated their World Series triumph and finally hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy, let’s turn our attention to the individual player awards for the 2019 regular season.

This year, two Canadians will feature notably in vying for the Rookie of the Year Award – the Atlanta Braves Mike Soroka (Calgary, Alta.) and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (Montreal, Que.) of the Toronto Blue Jays. In the four days from November 11 through November 14, MLB will announce, in turn. the winners of the Rookies of the Year, the Managers of the Year, the Cy Young Award winners and the league MVPs. While this article is primarily about Canadian rookie players, it is quite likely that Mike Soroka will receive some well-deserved consideration in the NL Cy Young Award vote and Freddie Freeman, whose parents were born in Canada, will almost certainly finish in the top five or six players in the vote for the National League MVP.

The National League race for the top rookie will almost certainly come down to two candidates – Atlanta’s Mike Soroka and Pete Alonso of the Mets. Washington’s Victor Robles, San Diego’s Fernando Tatis Jr., Dakota Hudson of the Cardinals and Pittsburgh’s Bryan Reynolds will also receive some deserved attention from the voters, but it is widely expected to be just a two-man contest. Despite the fact that Alonso set the eye-popping rookie home run record with 53 round-trippers, Soroka actually had the better WAR (wins above replacement). Soroka’s pitching WAR was 5.7 (fifth best among all NL hurlers) and was 5.7 overall (including batting and fielding) while Alonso (an offensive WAR of 5.8) was “just” 5.0 overall after taking into account his defensive play.

In the American League, the top rookie pitcher was the Orioles John Means, winner of 12 games with the struggling Baltimore Orioles while the best freshmen batter was Houston’s Yordan Alverez, who slugged 27 HR and 78 RBI in just 87 games. A trio of Toronto Blue Jays (at least in terms of WAR) should also warrant some consideration – Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Cavan Biggio and Bo Bichette. Clearly the NL had the best crop of rookies this year, but the American League race for the top rookie will witness a much closer vote among several candidates. Interestingly enough, this is not the first season in which two Canadian rookies will have a chance at acquiring the hardware for being the best rookie ball player.

The first season in which MLB actually presented the official award for the top rookie was 1947. That year, one winner was selected from both leagues, and fittingly, Jackie Robinson was the deserving recipient. Today, the award known as the Jackie Robinson Rookie of the Year Award commemorates his name. In the following season (1948), the Boston Brave’s Al Dark took home the rookie honours. In 1949 a rookie of the year was selected from both major leagues (Don Newcombe won in the NL and Roy Sievers took the AL prize). Just one Canadian has been named the Rookie of the Year in the official vote and that was Jason Bay of the Pirates for his batting exploits in his 2004 campaign.

First, let’s review the formal MLB definition of precisely what constitutes a “rookie” ball player:

A player shall be considered a rookie unless he has exceeded any of the following thresholds in a previous season (or seasons):

• 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the Major Leagues.

• 45 total days on an active Major League roster prior to September 1, when clubs are allowed to expand their rosters from the 25-player limit to include any player on the 40-man roster.

From September 1 through the end of the regular season, both at-bats and innings pitched count against rookie eligibility but days on a big league roster do not. A player must have rookie eligibility to be considered for any MLB rookie awards such as the American League or National League Rookie of the Year Award.

When Jason Bay won the Rookie of the Year NL Award, he captured 25 of a possible 32 first place votes for his 26 HR and 82 RBI in just 120 games played. Bay finished well ahead of two San Diego Padres rookies (Khalil Greene and Akinori Otsuka) in the voting tally. In 2005, Canadians managed to take a few votes for the Rookie of the Year in each league – Jeff Francis and Jesse Crain. The Canadian rookies who received at least one vote for the Rookie of the Year are listed in the tables at the end of this essay. The actual voting methods used for this award have changed during the last seventy years in which the award was presented so the vote totals show considerable variation in that table. Prior to the 1947 season, when no award was officially available, Canada actually produced several players with very impressive rookie credentials, and a couple who would almost certainly have won the award had it existed.

Canada’s first rookie player of note (and just the fourth Canadian ever to play in the big leagues) was Bill Phillips in 1879. Phillips played first base for the NL Cleveland Blues in his inaugural season, and batted .271 while participating in all but one of the scheduled 82 games that year. Phillips led the struggling Cleveland team (sporting a record of just 27 wins against 55 losses) in runs scored (58) and base hits (99).

Five seasons after that, Bill Moutjoy posted an impressive rookie campaign, winning 19 games against 12 losses for the Cincinnati Red Stockings of the American Association.

Perhaps the best rookie campaign garnered by a Canadian of more recent vintage was Pete Ward for the White Sox in 1963. Ward hit 22 home runs to go along with 84 RBI and a .295 batting average while playing excellent defense at third base. Ward finished second in the AL Rookie of the Year vote to his teammate Gary Peters. While Peters pitched very impressively, posting a 19-8 W-L record along with an ERA of just 2.33, it must be noted that the White Sox Park was a haven for pitchers over batters by a substantial margin in the 1960s and this was the time of the lowest batting averages and runs scored of any period in baseball since the dead-ball era. Had Ward played equally well and debuted 40 years after 1963, he would almost certainly have blasted 30 or more HR and driven more than 100 RBI.

Two other Canadian rookies had truly outstanding inaugural seasons before 1947 and almost certainly would have been named the winners of the rookie of the year had the award existed at the time. In his rookie campaign of 1938, Jeff heath batted .343 for the Cleveland Indians, to go along with his 21 HR, 112 RBI and 104 runs scored. Heath led the American League in triples (with 18) and accomplished these feats while playing in just 126 games. Had the Jackie Robinson Rookie Award existed at the time (nearly a decade before Robinson’s debut), the competition for rookie honours in the American League that year would have come from Joe Gordon (25 HR, 97 RBI, batting just .255, but was an outstanding fielder at second base) and Heath’s teammate, Ken Keltner. Keltner hit 26 HR, drove in 113 RBI and batted .276 (playing in 149 games at third base).

However, to see the greatest rookie campaign by a Canadian ball player, we must travel back in time to the 1910 baseball season. Russ Ford (born in Brandon Manitoba in 1883) had toiled in the minor leagues for several years before accidentally “discovering” his ticket to pitching excellence. He pitched one game with the AL New York ball club in 1909 (known as the Highlanders at the time) but he served up 4 runs in 3 innings pitched. He was pretty wild on the mound as well, hitting three opposing batters and walking four. When Ford was with Atlanta of the Southern Association, he was warming up under the stands with catcher Ed Sweeney on a rainy day. Still struggling with his wildness, he uncorked a wayward pitch that struck the wooden stands. When Sweeney retrieved the ball, Ford saw that the cow hide cover was quite rough where it had hit the wooden frame. When Ford gripped the ball on the side opposite its roughened surface on his next throw, it shot through the air with a deceptive sailing dip. He soon learned that the roughened surface was responsible for the ball's severe breaking movement in pitch after pitch. In his minor league season of 1909, he began to use his “emery pitch” regularly with considerable success and was given a shot with the Highlanders in the starting rotation in 1910. Thereafter, Ford used a scuffed ball while pitching, roughing the baseball surface with a small piece of emery that he carried in his glove.

Ford continued to guard the secret of his new pitch, boasting instead that he used a different version of a spitball (a legal pitch at the time). Pitching in the majors, Ford had the emery paper attached to a piece of string, which was fastened to the inside of his sweatshirt. At the end of each inning he would slip the emery paper under the tight-fitting undershirt, while at the start of each inning he would allow it to drop into the palm of his glove. With his “secret weapon” in hand, Ford posted rookie season statistics that have rarely been approached by any pitcher in the history of the game. In his first major league start in 1910, Ford struck out nine batters, walked none, and shut out the Philadelphia Athletics, 1-0. That Philadelphia club was one of the best ever, winning four pennants and three World Series in a five-year span. By season’s end, Ford ranked second in the league with 26 victories (against just 6 losses) and tied for second in shutouts (8), while posting an ERA of 1.65. He completed 29 of his 33 starts, striking out 209 batters while allowing just 70 walks. Ford's 26 victories established the American League rookie record, which still stands. Thanks in large part to Ford's dominating performance, the Highlanders finished in second place in 1910, with an 88-63 record, their best showing in four years.

Ford’s pitching actually improved as the season wore on, and he won all 12 of his last 12 starts that year (still the Yankee-Highlander record for winning consecutive games started). In his last 13 appearances (he had one save in relief during that span), Ford pitched 110 innings (completing all 12 starts), struck out 90 while walking just 14 batters, in allowing just 15 opponents’ runs. Of course there was no official rookie award in 1910, but had there been, the only competition for that mythical honour would have come from his teammate, Hippo Vaughn (with a 13-11 W-L record and an ERA of 1.83), and from Boston’s Duffy Lewis. Lewis was a truly gifted outfielder who batted .283 with 8 HR that year. This was still the dead-ball era, and pitchers’ ERAs below 2.00 were common place. The 8 HR that Lewis belted would actually earn him a tie with the legendary Ty Cobb for the second best home run figure in the AL in 1910.

Besides being the best rookie by far, Ford would almost certainly have placed second in the imaginary vote for the Cy Young Award that season. In point of fact, Cy Young was still active in 1910, and Ford bested him 4-1 in their August 30 matchup during his winning streak. Jack Coombs (of the championship Philadelphia A’s) would almost certainly be named the “Cy Young Award winner” in the American League for his 31-9 W-L record, and a sparkling 1.30 ERA in 353 innings pitched. Nonetheless, Ford did have the best WAR of all of the American League pitchers in 1910, beating out the actual second place finisher, Big Ed Walsh, by an 11.9 to 11.7 margin. Needless to say, messers Ford, Walsh and Coombs would certainly be mystified to see their names in the list of WAR league leaders at the time.

Along with Jason Bay, Jeff Heath and Russ Ford, the statistics for some other Canadian rookie players and pitchers who fashioned impressive initial campaigns are presented in the tables that follow.

Canadians Receiving at Least One Vote for Rookie of the Year

Best Rookie Seasons by Canadian Ball Players