The Rookie of the Year Award Isn't About Jake Arrieta

The baseball world is making strides. Local broadcasts show players' OBP and OPS. Most Valuable Player discussions regularly invoke WAR. WHIP and fielding independent measures pepper Cy Young debates. These advanced metrics -- (if you can call them that: OBP and SLG are as old as Yogi Berra, though they didn't storm the shores of Normandy) -- aren't the final word, but they're superior to the old standard of BA-HR-RBI and W-L, ERA.)

It's been gratifying to see that most fans and reporters have begun to digest the argument that a player's value has little to do with his teammates' performance. Unless his world craters in the last 15 games, Bryce Harper will win the MVP award he deserves in a rout, despite the Nationals' 2015 face plant.

Some of the credit for this belongs to MLB itself, which has embraced the new analysis and all the fun tools like Statcast and PitchFX. Articles on MLB.com are replete with references to True Average, WAR, BABIP, FIP and myriad other helpful measuring tools.

Simultaneously though, we're backsliding on that notion in other bailiwicks. Much of the Heisman discussion over the past five years has centered on the best team's best player, rather than on simply college football's standout performer.

Along those lines, I commend to your attention this article from Sports On Earth, a generally excellent site with lots of good insight. In it, the writer suggests that candidacies for the Rookie of the Year award waxed and waned based on team fortunes. We've seen this illogic before.

There is utterly no justification to holding an individual baseball player responsible for the performance of his 24 teammates. Moreover, while some retrograde writers still cower behind the "valuable" nomenclature of the MVP award to denigrate the candidacies of great players on non-contenders, there is no such fig leaf in the Rookie of the Year award. It is simply a measure of the first-year player who has had the best season. Period.

Kris Bryant is almost surely the 2015 NL Rookie of the Year, not withstanding the final 15 games. He's posted a .317 True Average at the plate, defended third base reasonably well and contributed five wins to his team, the best of the freshman lot. That his team will make the playoffs is absolutely, completely and undoubtedly irrelevant.

The Deficit In Washington

Here's the blog post I did not write 16 days ago, thank goodness:

All you dopes analyzing the Mets-Nationals dogfight for first place in the NL East, shut up!  There is no race: the Nats are twice as talented and have all their key pieces returning to the field. The NY stagecoach turns back into a pumpkin right about now.

Which is exactly what happened -- in a parallel universe opposite ours. In our bizarre, shared reality,  Washington lost 20 of 30 games, including six in a row, and has fallen under .500, dangerously behind not only the Mets, by five games, but the second Wild Card, by nine games. The only person in Washington less able to explain their performance is Hillary Clinton, but at least she's tried to obscure the evidence.

Now, there are still seven weeks left in the season, an eternity in the standings. As Sports on Earth's Will Leitch points out, the Rays, Orioles, Giants and Nationals were all locked into playoff berths seven weeks ago. Indeed, just 19 days ago, Washington owned a 2.5 game lead on the Mets, a 7.5-game turnaround in much less time than we have left.

But for another turnaround to happen, the Nationals, favorites to win 100 games when the goldenrod was just beginning to blossom, will have to perform as they have not yet.

Indeed, the issue with Matt Williams' club, beyond perhaps Matt Williams, is that nothing much and everything is responsible for their mediocrity simultaneously. Besides Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer, most of the team has been hurt, ineffective or both. Ian Desmond, Ryan Zimmerman and Jayson Werth all own sub-.300 OBP. Last year's star, Anthony Rendon, has struggled through 167 plate appearances. It's been so bad that Tyler Moore, Matt den Dekker and, for god's sake, Dan Uggla have seen serious action. (Top OPS+ among them, den Dekker's 65.)

On the hump, chickens have come home to roost on Doug Fister's declining velocity and Stephen Strasburg's fragility. Then, GM Mike Rizzo snagged diva Jonathan Pappelbon to replace Drew Storen at closer, and instead of setting up, Storen blew up, allowing 10 runs in his last six innings, after allowing just seven runs in the previous 42. 

Add to middling at the plate and on the hill, a defense tagged bottom third in the league by all the defensive metrics and you get 59-59, right where the D.C. Comics stand now.

Appropriately for a team where everything and nothing is the issue, there is plenty of time and none at all to win the East. (The Wild Card appears out of play.) The schedule gods have offered up the woeful Rockies, Brewers, Padres and Marlins on the catch-up alter, so if Washington is going to right the ship and make up ground, there's no time like the present.

All the pressure is on them, the 100-win favorites. The Mets are playing with house money and enjoying the entertaining narrative -- which is all Washington is good for these days anyway.