Is there an argument that Michael Stanton should be ROY?
First, let me hit some points that may or may not affect the judgment of the voters.
-Stanton could sneak into third place with the collapse of Mat Latos during September, behind Jason Heyward and Buster Posey. Over Latos' last four starts (16 innings), he's has a 10.12 ERA. Latos is now up 178.2 innings after throwing only 123.0 last year so maybe he's tiring. Typically clubs try to increase a young pitcher's workload by 20 percent which should have put him at a 147.2 cap this season. Stanton (.380 BA/eight home runs/19 RBI), Heyward (.381/seven home runs/22 RBI), Posey (.343/seven home runs/14 RBI) are all finishing strong as evidenced by their September numbers.
-Buster Posey, Jason Heyward and Mat Latos could all be in playoffs, Stanton will not be.
-Jason Heyward has been up since the start of the season which makes me think he's more of a household name than the others.
-Stanton is 20, Heyward is 21, Latos is 22 and Posey is 23.
-Posey plays a position where offense is scarcer than the outfield.
-Posey has hit cleanup, Heyward mostly #2, and Stanton #6/#7.
Now some arguments for Stanton to win the award:
-It was only by 10 or so days, but Stanton was in the minors longer which gave him less time to improve his overall stats. We'll even that playing field in a bit.
-Stanton has hit 43 total home runs this year between the minors and Florida. Obviously he wouldn't have hit that many in the majors alone and he probably needed the time in the minors to work on his swing, gain confidence, etc. Had he been in the majors the whole season (using his stats to prorated to Heyward's 508 ABs), he'd have 33 home runs. If he had 33 homers right now, he'd be 4th in the National League, ahead of Prince Fielder, Ryan Howard and Adrian Gonzalez.
Let's compare the Major League stats for the three batters:
Heyward - .278 BA, 18 home runs, 71 RBI, 81 runs, .851 OPS in 508 ABs
Posey - .313 BA, 17 home runs, 66 RBI, 57 runs, .877 OPS in 393 ABs
Stanton - .259 BA, 22 home runs, 58 RBI, 45 runs, .842 OPS in 343 ABs
Now let me bust out the calculator and use my Archimedes-like math skills to prorate Posey's and Stanton's numbers to Heyward's 508 ABs.
Heyward - .278 BA, 18 home runs, 71 RBI, 81 runs, .851 OPS in 508 ABs
Posey - .313 BA, 22 home runs, 85 RBI, 74 runs, .877 OPS in 508 ABs
Stanton - .259 BA, 33 home runs, 86 RBI, 67 runs, .842 OPS in 508 ABs
While Stanton's average is clearly not as good, there's a vast discrepancy between home runs. As mentioned above, Stanton's spot in the batting order doesn't help his RBI or run totals. He doesn't have the team's best on-base guys in front of him to rack up the RBI and his runs suffer with the bottom-of-the-lineup, poor average/power hitters behind him. His BABIP (.327) isn't too fluky considering how hard he hits the ball when he makes contact. Stanton leads the three players with a .514 slugging percentage.
Admittedly, there are many holes and/or flaws in my argument. I used ABs over PAs which wouldn't have helped Stanton's case at all. As I alluded to earlier, the prorated stats are just that, prorated. We really don't know what would have actually happened if Stanton got 508 Major League at-bats. I also conveniently left out OBP since Stanton's is the lowest.
Do I really think Stanton should be the ROY? No, I'd give it to Posey or Heyward ahead of him. My point is that Stanton should be mentioned in the ROY conversation and I haven't heard it at all. Every publication or newscast has exclusively Heyward vs. Posey and it's my opinion that Stanton has done enough to at least deserve a mention. I don't envy the person who has the task to rank any of these players this year; both at their respective positions or overall rankings.
What do you think?