The 2024 MLB National League rookie class has been one for the ages. The class is so packed with talent that 20-year-old phenom Jackson Chourio of the Milwaukee Brewers, who has a 3.8 bWAR and an 119 OPS+ will most likely finish third in the race.
Alongside Chourio, Shoto Imanaga who signed with the Chicago Cubs out of Japan in the offseason, will not crack the top 3 even with an all-star nod and impressive 2.91 ERA.
With an even better season than Imanaga and Chourio, San Diego Padres Outfielder Jackson Merrill could possibly take home the award. Merrill has been marvelous for San Diego this year, posting a 4.3 bWAR with 24 home runs and .829 OPS alongside an all-star nod.
It doesn’t end there. The guy Merril is in a dogfight with is Pittsburgh Pirate’s starting pitcher Paul Skenes who started the all-star game for the NL.
Skenes has been phenomenal this year. He has dominated with a 1.99 ERA, 0.962 WHIP and 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings. His fastball average is 99 MPH while his splinker has 7.2 inches of vertical movement, averages out at 94 MPH.
The knock on Skenes isn’t his performance this year, it’s due to the fact he has only pitched 131 innings a week away from the end of the regular season.
Due to not getting called up until the beginning of May, Skenes will likely finish second in the race. It is also hard to scale Skenes’ year to former rookie pitching years because of his lighter workload in comparison to higher workloads thrown on pitchers decades ago.
What we can do is look at Skenes 162-game adjusted splits that take his stat averages and lengthen them out to a full season to get a look at what his statistics would look like If he was with the team on opening day. With these splits, I looked at how Skenes stacked up against previous Rookies of the Years and how he compares historically.
It’s not the most consistent projection due to injuries and struggles due to overworking, but the 162-game adjusted split follows the trends of his statistics and does a good job of lengthening sample size.
We don’t get a good sense of what his ERA would look like since the splits are averaged meaning his ERA projection stays the same at 1.99. His strikeout total would’ve been 258 over 202 innings pitched. The last pitcher to eclipse 258 strikeouts in a season was Gerrit Cole in 2019, with 326 in 212.1 innings.
MLB.com wrote an article ranking every rookie of the year winner and listed Dwight Gooden with the 7th-best rookie campaign in MLB history and having the best rookie year for starting pitchers on the list.
Here is how Gooden’s 1984 season matches up with Skenes’ adjusted 162-game total 2024 season.
Innings: Gooden- 218, Skenes- 202
Strikeouts: Gooden- 276, Skenes- 258
ERA: Gooden- 2.60, Skenes- 1.99
FIP: Gooden- 1.69, Skenes- 2.48
WHIP: Gooden- 1.073, Skenes- 0.962
Skenes’ current ERA + is 213, while Gooden’s was 137. Skenes and Gooden’s seasons are statistically comparable and help us see just how good Skenes has been. It also helps fans see just how good Dwight Gooden was.
A big discrepancy in the 2 players’ stats is their ERA’s and FIP’s. FIP, which stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, eliminates the defense’s actions behind the pitcher and focuses on the controllables for the pitcher, which includes strikeouts, walks and home runs.
A reason for this could be the fact that Gooden only allowed 7 home runs and Skenes has allowed 10 in 87 fewer innings. Gooden’s higher strikeout numbers also help, but it’s hard to really pick who had the better season due to Skenes’ lesser amount of work.
What is true about Skenes is how dominant he has been. He broke Cy Blanton’s record of most strikeouts by a rookie in Pirates history at 151. Opponents are hitting Skenes at a measly .558 OPS. Skenes has the lowest xwOBA for starting pitchers this season. xwOBA is Expected Weighted On Base Percentage which factors Exit Velocity, Launch Angle and Sprint Speed by batters.
If Skenes had enough innings to qualify for league statistics, he would have the highest SO9 at 11.5.
While Skenes might or might not fall short of the Rookie of the Year Award, it is improbable what he has been able to do in such a short time. While he will miss out on hardware this year, Skenes will be a force to be reckoned with for a very long time.
Benes can be reached at [email protected]
