What Last Year’s AL ROY Results Can Tell Us About This Year’s NL Race

This year’s AL Rookie of the Year has already been decided. Nothing that can happen over the next 10 days is going to stop Nick Kurtz from earning all 30 first-place votes from the BBWAA writers.

The 22-year-old is enjoying one of the best offensive rookie seasons of all time, completely overshadowing players like Jacob Wilson and Noah Cameron, who would be strong ROY candidates themselves in most other years.

Meanwhile, the NL Rookie of the Year might be the least predictable of all the major award races.

Three contenders have separated themselves from the rookie pack in the Senior Circuit: Atlanta Braves catcher Drake Baldwin, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Isaac Collins, and Chicago Cubs right-hander Cade Horton. I think one could make a pretty convincing case for any of these three as the most deserving winner.

As I tried to figure out who I might pick to make such a case for, I realized how similar this year’s NL Rookie of the Year field is to last year’s crop of AL contenders.

If you need a refresher, Luis Gil of the New York Yankees narrowly defeated Colton Cowser of the Baltimore Orioles, while Gil’s Yankees teammate Austin Wells finished a distant third (Wells had been a more serious contender until a dreadful September slump tanked his case).

That’s a right-handed starting pitcher, an outfielder, and a catcher. Sound familiar?

2024 AL Rookie of the Year Finalists

• Luis Gil (RHP): 29 starts, 151.2 IP, 3.50 ERA, 2.1 fWAR
• Colton Cowser (OF): 153 games, 561 PA, 119 wRC+, 9 SB, 10 OAA, 3.8 fWAR
• Austin Wells (C): 115 games, 414 PA, 107 wRC+, 12 FRV, 3.5 fWAR

2025 NL Rookie of the Year Contenders

• Cade Horton (RHP): 22 games (21 starts), 115.0 IP, 2.66 ERA, 2.2 fWAR
• Isaac Collins (OF): 124 games, 419 PA, 124 wRC+, 16 SB, 3 OAA, 2.6 fWAR
• Drake Baldwin (C): 115 games, 406 PA, 116 wRC+, 1 FRV, 2.6 fWAR

There almost certainly won’t be any overlap between the 2024 AL ROY voters and the 2025 NL ROY voters – writers that cover AL teams vote for the AL awards, and writers that cover NL teams vote for the NL awards.

Still, considering the similarities between the contenders, perhaps we can learn something about how this year’s race might play out by studying last year’s results.

For one thing, it’s worth noting that Gil came out on top despite trailing Cowser in every version of Wins Above Replacement (fWAR, bWAR, and WARP). Wells also outperformed Gil in fWAR and WARP, and both Cowser and Wells outpaced Gil in Baseball Savant’s Run Value.

There aren’t a lot of metrics that put pitchers and position players on the same scale. But all the ones that do suggested Cowser, and possibly also Wells, were more valuable than Gil in 2024. Yet, it was Gil who took home the hardware.

What might this tell us?

Were voters itching to award a starting pitcher? Perhaps. Before Gil and Paul Skenes won in 2024, the last starter to win Rookie of the Year in either league was Michael Fulmer in 2016.

By this logic, Baldwin would have the upper hand. No catcher has won ROY honors since Buster Posey in 2010. He and Geovany Soto (2008) are the only backstops to take home the award in the 21st century. It’s hard to succeed as a first-year catcher, and Baldwin absolutely deserves credit for how well he’s taken to the challenge.

Were voters looking for a single stat to anchor their decision? I could believe it. One glance at Gil’s 3.50 ERA and it was clear he had an impressive rookie campaign. Meanwhile, Cowser was valuable because he did a lot of things well rather than excelling in any one statistical area. As for Wells, most of his value was from pitch framing, which remains a far more obscure statistic than ERA.

A line of thinking like this would certainly help Horton’s case. If the AL voters were impressed by Gil’s mid-3.00s ERA, it’s not hard to imagine the NL voters salivating over Horton’s ERA in the mid-2.00s. Collins, like Cowser, is more of a jack of all trades, and Baldwin’s value comes from being a good hitter for a catcher, rather than from eye-popping offensive or defensive stats.

Was it that Gil established himself as a favorite early on, while the others took a little longer to build their cases? Gil had a 2.03 ERA in his first 14 starts and a 5.15 ERA in his last 15. On the flip side, neither Cowser nor Wells even had a guaranteed role in his team’s starting lineup when the 2024 season started. Perhaps voters had already made up their minds about Gil, at least on some subconscious level, before the other contenders made things more interesting.

This is another point in Baldwin’s favor. One of the top prospects in baseball, Baldwin made headlines around the game when he earned a spot on Atlanta’s Opening Day roster. He was a ROY candidate to watch from the get-go, and it didn’t take him long to demonstrate why he was such a highly-regarded prospect.

Collins got off to a strong start as well, but he didn’t have any of Baldwin’s prospect shine to help him gain attention. It wasn’t until relatively recently that many fans outside of Milwaukee even knew his name.

Horton was also a highly-ranked prospect, but he didn’t debut until May, and his 4.45 ERA at the All-Star break didn’t have anyone thinking Rookie of the Year. He’s been unstoppable in the second half, but will it be enough to win over voters who might have written him off after his slow start?

What about playing time and leverage? Gil faced 637 batters in 2024, while Cowser stepped to the plate 561 times (and Wells a mere 414 times). In addition, Gil finished with +1.68 Win Probability Added (WPA), while Cowser finished with -2.51 and Wells with -0.16.

None of those numbers I just cited for Cowser and Wells take into account their defensive contributions or their work on the basepaths. Still, one could make a solid argument that Gil made a much bigger impact for his team than either Cowser or Wells, due to his additional playing time and exceptional performance in higher-leverage moments.

The playing time numbers for Horton (465 BF), Collins (419 PA), and Baldwin (406 PA) are all pretty close, but Horton has a massive lead in WPA. His 2.54 WPA is more than twice that of Collins (1.05) and more than four times that of Baldwin (0.58). Point Horton.

If you’re keeping score, that’s two arguments each for Baldwin and Horton. Is there any way to paint Gil’s win in an optimistic light for Collins?

What if the voters were swayed by Gil’s underdog narrative?

The BBWAA is made up of writers, and writers love a good story. Cowser and Wells were both first-round draft picks. Each appeared on numerous top 100 prospect lists before his debut.

Gil, on the other hand, was a far less heralded name. He signed with the Twins as an international free agent in 2015. His bonus was only $90,000. Three years later, the Twins traded him to the Yankees in a minor leaguer for minor leaguer swap. He made his MLB debut for the Yankees three years after that, but it wasn’t until another three years later that he had his breakout rookie season in 2024.

Unlike Cowser and Wells, few expected great things from Gil. The fact that he far exceeded expectations surely worked in his favor. Could the same be true for Collins?

Unfortunately, it seems more likely that the outfielder’s lack of prospect pedigree and his relative anonymity will hurt his case rather than help. (Things might be different if he played in New York instead of Milwaukee, but alas.)

At the same time, it’s still worth considering the possibility that Collins’s “came out of nowhere” story could be what convinces some narrative-minded voters to rank him ahead of Baldwin and Horton on their ballots.

Let me be clear: There’s only so much that one year of AL ROY results can tell us about another year of NL ROY voting. This exercise was more of a fun way to write about the current state of the NL ROY race than anything.

So, if you take anything away from this piece, let it be this: Far more goes into award voting, and especially Rookie of the Year voting, than just a straightforward comparison of numbers. Every voter is influenced by different factors and ultimately comes up with their own unique argument.

When it comes to this year’s NL competition, arguments could be made for all three of Drake Baldwin, Isaac Collins, and Cade Horton. The question is which of those arguments will prove to be the most plentiful among the 30 BBWAA voters.