St. Louis Cardinals: Harrison Bader for Rookie of the Year

The St. Louis Cardinals have a wunderkind in their center fielder and the baseball world is taking notice. Will he win the Rookie of the Year for the NL?

The St. Louis Cardinals have finally installed Harrison Bader as their all-time center fielder after having sent Tommy Pham packing for Tampa. By the way, Pham is making the most of his time in Tampa and is on a tear of late. Advantage remains with the St. Louis Cardinals in my book.

With his good fortune of late, Bader is currently sitting with a nice .273/.345/.434 and a nice .779 OPS. His real flash, however, is in the field and via his speed on the bags.

If you missed Dan’s love fest for Bader, you can read it and watch the clips he posted by following the link below.

Let me add the following speedster video to the collective of Bader’s amazing work:

This speed on the bags is definitely impacting the competition and impacting the St. Louis Cardinals in impressive fashion. As a matter of fact, in a recent game, Bader ran from first to home in 9.2 seconds.

I challenge anyone out there to run anything in 9.2 seconds!

Yes, the above graphic shows how he is as fast as the assumed MLB speedster, Billy Hamilton.

Here’s some more praise for the should-be Rookie of the Year:

That’s right: first place, first place, first place… just one step away from ROY. To me this is a no-brainer. This 3.9 WAR wunderkind deserves the ROY nod and I, for one, hope that he lands the award.

Let’s take a look at his current competition to see how they stack up to our youthful speedster who patrols CF at Busch Stadium.