History doesn't favor Cardinals' JJ Wetherholt in hotly contested Rookie of the Year Award

Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds appear to be locked in the largest skirmish between the two teams since the famous brawl in 2010 that vilified Yadier Molina and Brandon Phillips among the opposing fanbases. The Cardinals' JJ Wetherholt and the Reds' Sal Stewart are in a near dead heat for the National League Rookie of the Year Award, and when members of MLB Network weighed in on the race, they unanimously concluded that Stewart should take home the honors. As painful as it is to declare as a member of Cardinals Nation, that's likely what's going to occur barring a drastic shift in voter tendencies.

The Rookie of the Year Award has held real stakes for teams since the Prospect Promotion Incentive was instituted after the 2022 collective bargaining agreement, which allows eligible players who win the award to net their team an extra pick at the end of the first round of the next year's draft. The Wetherholt-Stewart battle is shaping up to be the closest Rookie of the Year race since the PPI was created, and both teams' supporters have seemingly airtight arguments for their respective player.

Wetherholt's recent slide at the plate has flipped the Rookie of the Year odds in favor of Stewart. Throughout August, Wetherholt has hit just .218 with a .645 OPS, while Stewart has a .286 average and a .782 OPS over that span. Despite those numbers, Redbird Rants writer Thomas Gauvain provided strong reasoning for why Wetherholt should win the award, hammering on Wetherholt's far superior defense and overall value to his team, along with the fact that their hitting stats would appear quite different if the two played their home games in opposite ballparks.

Giving the award to the Cardinals' JJ Wetherholt would fly in the face of history

There's no debate that Wetherholt's defense at second base has been sublime in his first major league season, but MLB Network was correct in that the Rookie of the Year Award is one that has historically focused on offense. Baseball has always valued what a position player does at the plate over what he accomplishes defensively.

Think of the players enshrined in the MLB Hall of Fame. Plenty of butchers in the field have been carved into the hallowed halls of the Cooperstown museum, but those who had defense as the central point of their game are few and far between when it comes to receiving baseball's highest honor.

The 2007 National League Rookie of the Year Award is perhaps the closest semi-recent comparison to Wetherholt and Stewart. The winner, Ryan Braun, hit .324/.370/.634 with 34 home runs and 97 RBIs. The runner-up, Troy Tulowitzki, hit .291/.359/.479 and had 24 home runs and 99 RBIs. The voters completely overlooked Tulowitzki's defensive superiority that allowed his 6.8 Wins Above Replacement to soar far above Braun's 2.0 WAR.

The obvious retort to this occurring again is that more metrics exist today than there were 19 years ago and there is more knowledge of advanced stats among fans and the baseball writers who vote on these awards. But numbers like home runs, RBIs and batting average will always be the sexy and alluring stats that pop out on paper. If Wetherholt wins the award, it will signal a stark difference in what statistics voters consider worthy of the honor compared with what they have valued since the award's creation in 1947.

2026 will be a fascinating litmus test on whether baseball writers prefer advanced stats and metrics or if they still subscribe to more traditional numbers. The voters might take into account that a Stewart victory would be easier for the fans who haven't adapted as quickly to baseball's changing tides to grasp, and my instinct tells me that those voters aren't ready to cater to the new-school fans yet.

I would love to be wrong and see Wetherholt win the award, but fans may need to be aware of the existence of this type of split so they're not blindsided when the sabermetric revolution grabs a hold of the Rookie of the Year Award.

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