Atlanta Braves Morning Chop sees a renewed Rookie of the Year battle
For about the month of July, the national baseball pundits were talking up a teen from Washington. Those voices are growing more annoying.
The expectation going into the season was that Ronald Acuña was the odds-on favorite for this season’s Rookie of the Year award in the National League – the second year in a row that the early talk was about an Atlanta Braves‘ rookie. This was happening even as the Braves kept him at AAA for most of the month of April.
Now it is notable that many didn’t expect the Nationals to call up teen Juan Soto so quickly… especially given that he started the season in low-A ball, saw just 39 minor league games in 2018, and skipped AAA all together.
While Acuña was well known – particularly as the #1 prospect going into the year, Soto wasn’t really on anyone’s radar for 2018. In fact, he may only have been pushed (yanked?) up to the majors so quickly due to some early desperation by the Nationals while much of their existing talent was either hurt or otherwise not performing.
Yet once Soto was promoted, people started gushing over him… and for some good reasons. But the headlines were a bit over the top:
- “Juan Soto is already making history” – fangraphs.com, June 14
- “Juan Soto looks like the best teenage hitter in history” – a different fangraphs writer, a week ago
- “The league has not caught up to Juan Soto, whose chief concern is his next at-bat” – Washington Post, August 9.
- The Post followed up with a call for the ROY award the next day. Stick to politics!
- “Washington Nationals: is Juan Soto the next Joey Votto” – District on Deck in our network.
…and this isn’t even counting the comments made via radio and TV broadcasts. It kinda feels like you need to wash up after hearing such things.