Various baseball and sports media outlets have been releasing their selections for Rookie of the Year over the last month. The decision seems to be split. Baseball America picked Pirates phenom starting pitcher Paul Skenes, while Padres star outfielder Jackson Merrill took home the honor from The Sporting News.
While we’re still most likely a few weeks away from this award being given out by Major League Baseball, the pick for the award is not exactly clear. We’ll look into both of their 2024 rookie campaigns, to see who should be given the ultimate honor of National League Rookie of the Year.
Standard Stats
It’s hard to compare these two’s standard stats given it’s a pitcher and a position player, but let’s give it a shot.
Merrill had great offensive numbers over the course of the regular season, hitting for a .292 batting average, 24 home runs, and 31 doubles with a 130 wRC+. What keeps Merrill in the race above his production is the fact he did it over the course of 156 games, a much larger sample size than what Paul Skenes could provide as a starting pitcher.
Skenes in his 133.0 innings pitched was incredible however, and was so good that in a sample size some would consider too small, put him as one of the frontrunners for NL Rookie of the Year. He posted a 1.96 ERA across 23 starts, with an K/9 rate of 11.5.
Statcast Percentile Rankings
These two rank highly in a majority of the advanced metrics across the entire league. What Merrill provided on both the offensive and defensive ends were pivotal to getting the Padres the fourth seed in the postseason. He hit the ball harder than a large majority of the league, and ranked in the 97th percentile for Outs Above Average with 12.
Skenes was elite in multiple categories this season among all qualified pitchers. He ranked in the 89th percentile for fastball velocity with an average of 96.6 MPH. He ranked in the 95th percentile in strikeout rate as well with a 33.1% K rate.
Again, both were very good as far as their advanced metrics go, but Skenes has the edge here as he was above average in basically every single metric.
Win Probability
This may be where we can truly see who was more valuable to their ball club. Stats aside, there’s the obvious factor here of the Pirates not being a postseason contender. One could argue that even without looking at numbers that Merrill was more valuable to San Diego’s postseason push just by watching the games. There’s validity to that thought process, but let’s take a look at the numbers anyway.
Two good stats to look at for these two would be win advancement and clutch. According to FanGraphs, win advancement measures the amount of positive wins a player contributes to their team, adding plays where that player increased their teams win expectancy.
Jackson Merrill’s 2024 +WPA (win advancement): 11.73
Paul Skenes’ 2024 +WPA (win advancement): 9.94
Merrill’s win advancement is slightly higher but that’s not entirely shocking due to the multiple big moments he had, especially towards the end of the season for the Padres. In a larger sample size as well, as a position player Merrill had more chances to give his team a higher win expectancy.
One more win probability stat we’ll look at is clutch. It’s what it sounds like. It’s simply how clutch a player is in a season. In the regular season, Skenes had the edge in this stat over Merrill with an above average clutch rate of 0.52. Merrill’s -0.02 was just slightly below average, but his postseason clutch was slightly above average at 0.14.
While Skenes was technically a more clutch player in his regular season, his smaller sample size of play paired with Merrill’s higher win advancement rate still doesn’t exactly help us completely narrow this down any further.
After looking at all of these stats, the answer is still not very clear. Comparing these two is just too difficult, and maybe this is slightly overcomplicating things. There’s one final statistic to look at that can sum up how valuable these two really were this season: Wins Above Replacement (WAR).
Wins Above Replacement
When looking at WAR we’ll use FanGraphs measuring of the metric as referred to as f(WAR). The metric is used to sum up a player’s contributions to their team over the course of the season. It is an all inclusive measurement, which takes everything into account making it a good number to compare among all players, pitchers or position players.
Between both Paul Skenes and Jackson Merrill it’s close, but Merrill has the slight edge with a 5.3 f(WAR) compared to Skenes’ 4.3 f(WAR). By this measurement alone, Merrill is seen in 2024 as the more valuable player.
While Paul Skenes season has been absolutely incredible, Merrill just had too much more time with great production for him to not take this award. What he accomplished earning the starting job for the National League in the All Star Game, and recording a sub-2.00 ERA in his first season, there’s no doubt in any fans mind he’ll be the most feared arm in baseball for years to come.
For Jackson Merrill, he’s earned this Rookie of the Year award. He’s taken leaps far beyond where anyone may have thought he’d be after this season. He looks poised to become a staple piece of San Diego’s outfield for years to come as well as a perennial All Star like Skenes.
It wouldn’t be surprising in the near future to see these two duke it out for National League MVP, while Skenes will certainly make cases for the National League Cy Young Award. The two have earned their status as some of the best and brightest young stars in the league.
2024 National League Rookie of the Year Winner: Jackson Merrill