The Rookie of the Year Award Isn't About Jake Arrieta

The baseball world is making strides. Local broadcasts show players' OBP and OPS. Most Valuable Player discussions regularly invoke WAR. WHIP and fielding independent measures pepper Cy Young debates. These advanced metrics -- (if you can call them that: OBP and SLG are as old as Yogi Berra, though they didn't storm the shores of Normandy) -- aren't the final word, but they're superior to the old standard of BA-HR-RBI and W-L, ERA.)

It's been gratifying to see that most fans and reporters have begun to digest the argument that a player's value has little to do with his teammates' performance. Unless his world craters in the last 15 games, Bryce Harper will win the MVP award he deserves in a rout, despite the Nationals' 2015 face plant.

Some of the credit for this belongs to MLB itself, which has embraced the new analysis and all the fun tools like Statcast and PitchFX. Articles on MLB.com are replete with references to True Average, WAR, BABIP, FIP and myriad other helpful measuring tools.

Simultaneously though, we're backsliding on that notion in other bailiwicks. Much of the Heisman discussion over the past five years has centered on the best team's best player, rather than on simply college football's standout performer.

Along those lines, I commend to your attention this article from Sports On Earth, a generally excellent site with lots of good insight. In it, the writer suggests that candidacies for the Rookie of the Year award waxed and waned based on team fortunes. We've seen this illogic before.

There is utterly no justification to holding an individual baseball player responsible for the performance of his 24 teammates. Moreover, while some retrograde writers still cower behind the "valuable" nomenclature of the MVP award to denigrate the candidacies of great players on non-contenders, there is no such fig leaf in the Rookie of the Year award. It is simply a measure of the first-year player who has had the best season. Period.

Kris Bryant is almost surely the 2015 NL Rookie of the Year, not withstanding the final 15 games. He's posted a .317 True Average at the plate, defended third base reasonably well and contributed five wins to his team, the best of the freshman lot. That his team will make the playoffs is absolutely, completely and undoubtedly irrelevant.