Sal Stewart has been named as the National League’s Rookie of the Month for August. It is the second time this season that the Cincinnati Reds infielder has earned the award for his performance. Stewart also won the award to begin the season for how he performed in April.
During the month of August Sal Stewart hit for a .304 batting average, his seven walks and two hit by pitches combined with his 35 hits led to a .349 on-base percentage, and his eight home runs along with two doubles led to a .530 slugging percentage. In his 29 games played he drove in 21 runs and he scored 21 runs for the Reds. Stewart closed out the month in a big way, going 14-39 with an OPS of 1.073 in the final nine games – including hitting home runs in three straight games from the 28th through the 30th.
For the most part that’s just been more of the same for the corner infielder. Stewart is now leading the league in both RBI and games played. His 105 RBI on the season combined with his 31 home runs make him just the 14th rookie all time to reach the 30 and 100 marks in the same season. He’s added in 25 doubles and 12 stolen bases in 16 tries for good measure. With a strong August he’s raised his line on the season up to .266/.336/.485.
Stewart has a big lead among National League rookies this season in home runs. He’s sitting atop the leaderboard with 31, while the next closest player is JJ Weatherholt, who has 17. Stewart also has a huge lead when it comes to RBI, too. His 105 lead the league among all players, but among rookies no one is within 40 – TJ Rumfield of the Colorado Rockies is in second place with 64. Only two other rookies even have 50. Among rookies with at least 300 plate appearances this season, Stewart is also pacing the rookies with a .485 slugging percentage.
Need Sal to finish out strong and bring home the Rookie of the Year hardware and the PPI pick that comes with it. Could give us 4 picks in the top 50 picks in next year’s draft. We need to nail that to help rebuild the farm system.
At yet they still tout JJ Weatherholt as the leading candidate. An obsession with WAR over productivity.
As I pointed out in my post a while back, JJ’s advantage in WAR is entirely predicated on his defense, specifically his DRS numbers (which are highly suspect) and in general the lack of respect for first basemen because actual skills such as digging out bad throws, bunt coverages, and pickoffs aren’t valued. I compared Wetherholt to Matt McLain defensively. It’s a fact they have identical sprint speeds, McLain plays impeccable defense (zero errors as a 2b), yet Wetherholt has +15 DRS to McLain’s -7!!! This is utterly laughable.
Sal Stewart, ROY.
Sprint speed has little to do with infield defense, though.
I’ll grant you that I call bull crap on Matt McLain being that much of a negative defender, though.
“They”
For thought experiment, it both were offered in a trade with another team (not that it would happen), which would be the more desirable player to acquire?
JJ Wetherholt or Sal Stewart?
WAR is kind of a game being played. Offensive WAR is certainly more tangible, but WAR assigned to defense seems to be a lot more subjective. Not incomprehensible, just SEEMS more subjective.
An article on mlb.com has Sal leading the way. This article is from yesterday.
https://www.mlb.com/news/sal-stewart-legendary-rookie-season-reds
I’d much rather go to WAR with Stewart. haha
How about making Rookie of the Month a way to accumulate points toward ROY, and at the end of the year, we would all know who was ROY by looking at the point totals.
Just use a point system like the college basketball and football weekly polls, but do it on a monthly basis. Rate the top 10 rookies of the month for each league separately.
Give 15 points for first, 11 for second, and 8 points down to 1 in descending order for 3-10.
He sure had a great August. Now if he wants to win Rookie of the month for Sept, he needs to play better than the last 3 games and i am confident he will.
The last three games he went 3 for 12 with a double and did not strike out even once. Honestly, not that bad.
Stop with the facts already … 😉
Sal Stewart will win ROY. Yes defense matters but availability matters as well. The writers understand that WAR, like any statistic, has flaws. They will take that into consideration and vote accordingly.
Sal will win it. He has the league’s attention. Well deserved.
Well earned by our Guy Sal. Joey’s commentary on him was very telling (as was Rizzo’s).
We’ll see where the actual votes fall vs. the prognostications, projections, and odds. That’s what counts in the end.
An article on mlb.com has Sal leading the way. This article is from yesterday.
https://www.mlb.com/news/sal-stewart-legendary-rookie-season-reds
“Stewart has a big league among National League rookies this season in home runs.”
He also has a big LEAD too? 😉
Hey. I know you’re just always keeping us on our toes. 🙂
@Doug. So you can be funny . That was good one
Here is the litmus test! If Wetherholt was first of all healthy and if 2B, SS & 3B was otherwise occupied by better players, would the Cardinals replace Burleson at first with Wetherholt? I don’t think so. WAR needs to be adjusted to be fairer to first basemen as well as other positions.
Congrats to Sal!
Best hitter on the Reds, boasting a career 126 OPS+, and it feels like he’s going to get even better. Productive at bats, fantastic zone awareness. There’s so much to like about Sal. He’s been one of the few bright spots on the Reds this season. Imagine if our 7-9 hitters weren’t so consistently inept, I wonder where his RBI total would be.
It was pretty frustrating to see Wetherholt leading all the ROTY polls the last few months. Shame that it finally took a slump by JJ to put Sal in the lead.
That said, pretty much every poll out there now has Stewart comfortably in the lead.