‘Believe in the power of cheese’: How a group of rookies helped give the Brewers the best vibes in baseball
MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Brewers had just finished one of the most successful road trips in their history, a 7-3 romp through the western regions of the big leagues, when the team returned home to bad news.
Garrett Mitchell, a rookie who had had a blistering first three weeks as the team’s starting center fielder, suffered labrum damage on an aggressive slide into third base during extra innings in Seattle.
The severity of Mitchell’s injury was announced Friday, and Mitchell spoke to the gathered media after manager Craig Counsell broke the news. After explaining that he was still processing the blow and declaring his intention to get back by the end of the season if at all possible, the almost impossibly upbeat Mitchell turned into a P.R. rep for the player replacing him, a 6-foot-4, blond-haired, toolsy rookie named Joey Wiemer.
“Joey is going to be fine,” Mitchell said. “The organization, all of the fans, should be happy, excited for him. He’s going to do a good job.”
Wiemer, who has all of 24 big league games under his belt, started about 80% of his games in the minor leagues on the outfield corners, mostly in right, where he featured one of the strongest arms in professional baseball. Center field is another beast, of course, but during his 44 games in The Show, Mitchell has shown signs of becoming an elite defender at that crucial position, the one held down so well in recent seasons by now-retired Lorenzo Cain.
On April 22, the day after Mitchell’s pep talk, the Brewers were clinging to a one-run lead against the Red Sox in the fifth inning. Boston’s Alex Verdugo blistered a Wade Miley pitch 103.7 mph to dead center. Wiemer got a quick read on it, raced for the warning track and made a leaping, twisting, falling grab on a ball that might have left the park had he not caught it.
It happened again in the eighth: With Milwaukee still leading by a run, Verdugo launched a 103.2 mph drive, right at Wiemer, who took a few long strides toward the wall and leaped slightly to make the grab. This was another ball that would have clanged off the fence if Wiemer had not reacted so quickly, moved so well or, let’s face it, if he were not so huge. He made it look easy.
“I’m very comfortable in center,” Wiemer said, with the kind of nonchalance only a rookie can summon. “I just touch the grass and if the ball’s in the air, go catch it. I just treat it all the same.”
This is just an anecdote, but it illustrates some crucial things about this version of the Brewers. They are younger. They are more athletic. They are more fun. They are deeper. And because of all these factors, they are better.
This can change. After all, we haven’t even reached the end of April. But when it comes to the Brewers, don’t look at this start as a mirage. This team was already pretty good, but now it’s better. In fact, while it’s too soon to make this a declaration, we can at least speculate that when the dust settles, we might just look at these Brewers as the most improved team in baseball.
THIS QUESTION OF “most improved” is a nebulous concept that depends on how you frame things. In this case, you can’t really predict that the Brewers will improve their win total more than any other team, simply because Milwaukee was already good. The Brewers won 86 games last season and missed the playoffs by only one game.
This is more a matter of trajectory. Milwaukee’s win count in 2022 was a nine-game drop over 2021. The roster was getting older, with an average age of 29.1 for the position players, the highest figure for the Brewers in more than a decade. Things appeared to be heading in the wrong direction and if that were the case, at the very least a season of retrenchment could be expected as the Brewers transitioned some of their top prospects to the majors.
Instead, this year’s group has been recharged by the injection of a group of rookies, not just onto the roster but into featured roles.
Between Mitchell and Wiemer, the Brewers have had a rookie starting in center field every game this season. Brice Turang, a Kiley McDaniel top 100 prospect heading into the season, has started most of the games at second base.
Youthful energy is one thing, but for a team with the stated goal of getting back to the playoffs, production is even more important. Wiemer ranks third among National League rookie position players by fWAR, Mitchell is sixth and Turang is 12th, even while all of them are still developing at the plate. That’s what a full set of tools can do for a young player.
“When you have young guys like that, you want to let them play, and so you try to give them some real runway,” said Matt Arnold, who took over baseball operations for the Brewers this winter. “It’s not just that they’re young, those guys are special. They’re young and they’re talented and they’re energetic. They just bring so much positive energy to the table.”
Take the cheesehead, introduced as a home run celebration. You have probably seen it on highlights. Every team comes up with something. The Pirates have a sword. The Orioles have a water bong. And the Brewers have the cheesehead, donned by every player who swats a ball out of the park. It’s the most Wisconsin thing ever, especially since it hit the big time in a game won on a Mitchell longball off the New York Mets‘ Adam Ottavino with Green Bay Packers running back A.J. Dillon in town. Dillion threw out the first pitch the night before, chugged a beer during the game and declared cheeseheads for all.
“I do believe in the power of cheese,” Mitchell said after his heroics. “It seems to be working. I think we should continue using it.”
They have continued using it, even perching it on the plus-sized dome of Tellez, the team’s preeminent home run hitter. During an MLB.TV interview, Tellez half-heartedly suggested the originator of the celebration, shortstop Willy Adames, should upgrade.
“I tell him we’re going to have to get a bigger one,” Tellez said. “Because it looks like a little Cheez-It on my head.”
Underlying this is a key point: This team has fun, in the clubhouse and on the field, and that makes it fun to watch. The clubhouse part is always hard to read when a team is playing well, because you don’t know if the upbeat mood is from the winning or if the winning is an outgrowth of the upbeat mood. Either way, the Brewers have both the wins and the fun. The kids are at the center of the MLB-elite defensive metrics on the field, but also in the ping pong matches and pop-a-shot H-O-R-S-E contests in the clubhouse.
“Young players, just because of where they’re at in their careers, they’re fun,” Counsell said. “They’re going through experiences for the first time and all the other players, they enjoy going through that experience again as well. Because it’s one of the best times of your life, getting called up to the big leagues and your first weeks in the big leagues.
“Everybody enjoys kind of reliving that. I don’t know what baseball player wouldn’t. And you get to do it through a bunch of guys, and they’re good teammates, they’re good people and they’re easy to root for. I think that’s definitely energized us.”
For the rookies, the effect is heightened by the fact that they are doing it as friends and teammates who rose together through the Milwaukee system. “Yeah, it’s awesome,” Wiemer said. “It really helps you, just to have a guy to look to, knowing they’re in the same boat trying to prove the same things. We just go out and feed off each other.”
This process would be more difficult if the veterans weren’t accommodating or were even resentful of the new faces. Clearly, that’s not the dynamic in Milwaukee.
“The veteran guys and the guys who have been here for a while have allowed us to be ourselves,” Turang said. “It’s been one of the biggest keys. Those guys have done nothing but respect us and allow us to play the game the way we play the game. It’s everybody in this locker room that’s helping each other out.”
The rookies have reciprocated the hospitality with real contributions to the Brewers’ fast start. Through the Boston series, no team had more WAR from rookies than Milwaukee.
YOU MIGHT NOTICE the absence of the word “surprise” throughout this story. That’s because you can call the 16-8 Baltimore Orioles a surprise, albeit a mild one, given preseason forecasts. The National League-leading Pittsburgh Pirates certainly qualify as a surprise and probably the Texas Rangers as well, simply because they lost so many games over the past couple of years. But the Brewers’ 16-9 start — they’re currently one game behind the Pirates in the NL Central — shouldn’t really be a surprise.
That’s because the Brewers have become one of the more consistently successful teams in the major leagues, and in the process, one of the most incessantly overlooked. Since the beginning of the 2017 season, only the Los Angeles Dodgers and Braves have won more games among NL clubs. That the Brewers have been able to put a halt to what seemed like an emergent downturn — while getting younger and more sustainable at the same time — is only the latest example of this consistency.
But a reset, if not a full rebuild, appeared likely after David Stearns, the respected architect of the recent run of solid Milwaukee clubs, announced he was stepping away from his job running the baseball operations of the Brewers and moving into an advisory role. His job was filled by Arnold, who had worked alongside Stearns in recent years.
Facing his first offseason as the head honcho, Arnold described his overall plan for the winter with utmost clarity.
“I think the overarching theme was we’ve got to get back to the playoffs,” Arnold said.
So a retrenchment was not in the offing. But with an aging roster and a gap in your postseason résumé, the task of reversing an apparent decline isn’t easy, especially when you’re not going to be in play for the top free agents. Opportunism becomes the strategy, in moves that won’t generate many hot stove headlines. And for an organization like the Brewers, that approach must be accompanied by faith in the players your system is pushing up to the majors.
The first domino was a late-November trade that sent Hunter Renfroe to the Los Angeles Angels for three pitching prospects, including Janson Junk and Elvis Peguero, both immediate depth options. Just as importantly, moving Renfroe’s power bat opened up an outfield slot and, as we’ll see, the Brewers needed to create opportunity in the outfield.
In early December, another opportunity was created when Milwaukee sent veteran second baseman Kolten Wong to the Seattle Mariners for Jesse Winker and Abraham Toro. This opened second base for Turang and gave Milwaukee an everyday-against-righties DH in Winker and quality veteran depth in Toro, who started the season in Triple-A.
Other moves flew way under the radar. Owen Miller (Cleveland Guardians) and Javy Guerra (Tampa Bay Rays) were added as players to be named later from trades earlier in the year. Minor league free agent Blake Perkins was signed. Former Brewer starter Wade Miley was signed to a free agent deal, returning to Milwaukee for the first time since 2018.
Then, that opportunism came into play. First, Arnold injected the Brewers into the Sean Murphy sweepstakes by offering up the prospect the Atlanta Braves needed to sway the Oakland Athletics, sending Esteury Ruiz to Oakland. Murphy headed for Atlanta, which sent a clutch of prospects to the A’s to join Ruiz. Arnold, for his trouble, added a complementary big league reliever in groundballer Joel Payamps and a 25-year-old starting catcher in William Contreras, who made the NL All-Star team last season.
Finally, Brian Anderson, who was non-tendered by the Miami Marlins in November, signed with the Brewers in late January.
“It was just a combination of how to do things, to improve everywhere, across the board,” Arnold said. “Improve our depth, improve our rotation and our bullpen. It’s challenging to do, especially in a market that was pretty crazy, but fortunately, we were able to add some guys that have so far played really well.”
CONSIDERING ALL OF this change — plus an early injury to starting third baseman Luis Urias — the bottom line is this: Of the nine players who have currently played the most at their respective positions, only three are carryovers from last season: Tellez, Adames and Christian Yelich.
Yelich’s tenure with the club is an interesting prism through which to view the Brewers’ success. His first season with Milwaukee was 2018, when the Brewers won 96 games and finished one win shy of the World Series, losing to the Dodgers in the NLCS. Even as the roster keeps churning, the Brewers have remained competitive ever since, with four playoff appearances in the past six seasons — in the other two, they finished a single game out of the NL bracket. And yet Yelich is the only position player remaining from his first Brewers team.
There are many explanations for this ongoing competitiveness despite so much turnover. One is a willingness to spend, at least moderately: Milwaukee is baseball’s smallest market, but the Brewers’ payroll has ranked in the 19-20 range the past three seasons, per Cots Contracts.
Counsell’s nine-year tenure is another, one constant in the storm of iteration that marks baseball in a market like Milwaukee.
“He’s a winner,” Turang said. “He wants to win as much as we do. When you have that atmosphere and that’s all you have to focus on, leaving stuff off the field at the door, it’s been awesome.”
In practical terms, this has been evident in different ways over the years, all while Counsell has soared to the top of his profession. He (and his pitching coaches, currently Chris Hook) have been able to put relievers in the right roles to bridge the innings from Milwaukee’s strong starting staff to its lockdown closer, formerly Josh Hader and now Devin Williams. It’s also evident in the Brewers’ ability to field elite defenses, with Counsell usually deflecting the credit for that to coaches like Pat Murphy and Nestor Corredor.
But maybe it’s evident most of all in the way the players so often seem to just get better after they join the Brewers. For all the attention that has gone to teams like the Rays, Dodgers and San Francisco Giants for their ability in this area, Milwaukee ranks right with them. Two of the offseason acquisitions, Anderson and Contreras, are the latest examples of this.
Anderson has been a major boost to the roster in a number of ways. On offense, he’s simply hitting the ball harder more often than ever before. His barrel rate this season (18.9%) is in the top 10 percentile of big league hitters. And, in his first season with the Brewers, it’s more than double the career standard he established with the Marlins (7.8%).
Perhaps just as important, Anderson’s defensive ability in both the infield and the outfield has allowed Counsell to shape his lineup in a number of ways even as he moves players around and covers for the absences of Urias, Tyrone Taylor and, now, Mitchell.
“We’ve come to realize just how valuable that is, especially with our injuries,” Counsell said. “The infielder-outfielder, just the flexibility that it gives you, just increases the floor for your team.”
Contreras made the NL All-Star team last season largely because of his bat. He produced at 136 OPS+ for the Braves but was dealt largely because they believed Murphy’s defense made him a more viable everyday option.
It’s early days when it comes to looking at this game of catching musical chairs, but Contreras has been a big part of Milwaukee’s elite run prevention unit so far. According to Fangraphs’ consensus rating for defense, Murphy indeed leads all backstops with 3.5 runs saved above average. But Contreras is tied for second at 3.3, along with his brother, Willson.
“Contreras is a dynamic player and it’s happening on both sides of the ball, which has been a lot of fun,” Arnold said. “Same with Brian Anderson. There aren’t too many guys that can go at third and to the outfield at a very high level. So those kinds of profiles, when they come available, we just do what we can to hop in and get involved.”‘
THERE WILL BE challenges ahead for the Brewers. The Mitchell injury was a gut punch, especially given an injury to Sal Frelick, the highly rated outfield prospect who likely would have been his replacement — if not for the ill fate that he sprained his left thumb in the minors on the very same day that Mitchell injured his shoulder in Seattle. Like Mitchell, Frelick suffered the injury on a slide.
While Frelick’s injury required surgery, his recovery is expected to be much quicker than that of Mitchell — Frelick could be back in as soon as six weeks. Whenever he returns, adding another rookie of his caliber could help perpetuate this feeling of forward momentum for Milwaukee, even as everyone holds out hope that Mitchell can return to help out late in the campaign.
The team continues to wait to see how long it might have to go without ace starter Brandon Woodruff, who has an ailing shoulder. Meanwhile, co-ace Corbin Burnes has been up and down to start the season, though given his track record, that’s only another spot at which Milwaukee can look to get better as the season goes along. Eventually, Urias will add to that dynamic as well.
But on the field, the Brewers show every sign of being a sustainable contender. Only five teams have a better run differential during the early going, even though Milwaukee has played a tough early schedule.
The Brewers rank in the top 10 positionally by fWAR at most spots and are in the positive at most of the others, except for DH. And that ranking could change fast if Winker gets going. They rank second in Fangraphs’ team defensive metric and have an elite ERA+ of 120.
In other words, this is a complete team without any glaring weaknesses and with excellent depth (as long as the injury bug doesn’t get worse), a balanced set of skills and a number of players who should continue to trend in a positive direction.
So if the Brewers aren’t the most improved team in the majors yet, they might just get there by season’s end. Either way, this is a team that is just enjoying what it is doing right now. It plans to keep doing it.
“We’ve had a good time,” Turang said. “We just keep continuing to go out there every day, give it all we got and try to win ball games. But we know nothing’s promised. So we’re just going to keep the energy high and the focus going.”
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Bradford Doolittle, ESPN Staff Writer
Welcome to MLB Awards Week.
November has become awards season in baseball, which increasingly serves as a way to keep eyeballs on the game before the hot stove season ramps up. So far, we’ve gotten the Gold Glove Awards, Silver Sluggers, the All-MLB Team and more.
Now, it’s time for the biggies — the four major awards determined by Baseball Writers’ Association of America voting and that will feature prominently in baseball history books and Hall of Fame résumés of the future. The winners are being announced live each night on MLB Network, starting at 6 p.m. ET.
On Monday, a pair of starting pitchers — Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Luis Gil of the New York Yankees — got the week rolling, winning the Jackie Robinson Rookie of the Year Award in the National League and American League, respectively.
Here’s the rest of the week’s schedule:
Tuesday: Managers of the Year
Wednesday: Cy Young Awards
Thursday: MVP Awards
Below, we list the three finalists in each of the big four categories, with what you need to know before the results are announced, and who our panel of ESPN MLB experts believes should take home the hardware. We’ll update each section with news and analysis as the awards are handed out.
Jump to:
Rookie of the Year: AL | NL
Manager of the Year: AL | NL
Cy Young: AL | NL
MVP: AL | NL
American League Rookie of the Year
Winner: Luis Gil, New York Yankees
Final tally: Gil 106 (15 first-place votes); Colton Cowser, Orioles, 101 (13); Austin Wells, Yankees, 17; Mason Miller, Athletics, 16 (1); Cade Smith, Guardians, 12 (1); Wilyer Abreu; Red Sox, 11; Wyatt Langford, Rangers, 7
Experts’ pick: Gil (7 votes); Cowser (1 vote); Smith (1 vote)
Doolittle’s take: This was a race in which you could have plucked the names of any of about seven players out of a hat without worry of finding a wrong answer. Of course, by the time Monday rolled around, we were down to three names in that hat, the finalists, but the statement holds true. There was no wrong answer, which is probably why the voting was so close.
With no clear front-runner, voters had to weigh some narrative aspects alongside a muddy statistical leaderboard, one that gave different answers depending on which site you happened to pull up. That’s why AXE (see note) exists — to create a consensus from these different systems — but it didn’t do much to clarify the AL rookie derby.
Gil and Wells, both essential rookie contributors to the Yankees’ run to the World Series, excelled with a lot of eyeballs on them all season, and that certainly didn’t hurt their support. Cowser’s role as an every-day player for the playoff-bound Orioles also had a high-visibility context. It feels like that, as much as anything, is why this trio emerged as finalists in a hard-to-separate field.
The emergence of Gil and the gaps he filled in an injury-depleted Yankees rotation were too much to ignore. It was a surprising emergence: Gil is 26, and he debuted in professional baseball way back in 2015 as a 17-year-old in the Minnesota organization. But when you talk about impact, you can conjure up all sorts of ill scenarios for New York had he not led AL rookies with 15 wins, 141 strikeouts and a 3.50 ERA (minimum 10 starts).
The voters got it right, if only because they could not possibly have gotten it wrong.
Here’s how my AXE leaderboard had it:
1. Smith, Guardians (117 AXE)
2. Langford, Rangers (116)
3. (tie) Miller, Athletics (115)
Abreu, Red Sox (115)
Gil, Yankees (115, winner)
6. Wells, Yankees (113, finalist)
7. Cowser, Orioles (111, finalist)
Note: AXE is an index that creates a consensus rating from the leading value metrics (WAR, from FanGraphs and Baseball Reference) and contextual metrics (win probability added and championship probability added, both from Baseball Reference), with 100 representing the MLB average.
ROY must-read:
Bump in the road or ominous sign: Has Luis Gil hit a wall after his red-hot start?
National League Rookie of the Year
Winner: Paul Skenes, Pittsburgh Pirates
Final tally: Skenes 136 (23 first-place votes); Jackson Merrill, Padres, 104 (7); Jackson Chourio, Brewers, 26; Shota Imanaga, Cubs, 4
Experts’ pick: Skenes (8 votes); Merrill (1 vote)
Doolittle’s take: Skenes emerged as the winner of a star-studded NL rookie class that was deep in impact performances put up by high-upside prospects who should only get better as the years progress. It was also a classic debate, one that stirs the passions whether you are driven by traditional approaches or the most current of performance metrics: Can a starting pitcher really produce more value than a position player given the disparity in games played?
It’s a debate mostly settled in the MVP races, where pitchers only occasionally bob up to forefront of the conversation. The one in the NL Rookie of the Year race this season between Skenes, Merrill and, to a lesser extent, Chourio was a classic example.
Sure, Skenes was absolutely dominant; he’s a finalist in the NL Cy Young race, for goodness sake. Still, we’re talking about 23 games. Meanwhile, Merrill’s gifts were on display in 156 contests for the Padres, while Chourio played in 148 games for Milwaukee. Yes, the value metrics are supposed to clarify these comparisons, but, still, how do you weigh that kind of disparity between players with entirely different jobs?
In the end, I’m not sure there’s a right answer to that debate, nor is there a wrong answer to this balloting. Each of the finalists would have been a slam-dunk winner in many seasons. Skenes might very well be the best pitcher in baseball by the time we get to these discussions a year from now, if he isn’t already. In less than a year and a half, he has been the top overall pick in the draft, started an All-Star Game and become a finalist in two of the NL’s major postseason awards.
You can certainly makes cases for Merrill and Chourio. But you can’t really make a case against Skenes, 23 games or not. Since earned runs became official in 1913, Skenes became the fourth pitcher with a strikeout rate of at least 11 per nine innings while posting an ERA under 2. He’s just that much of an outlier.
Here’s how my AXE leaderboard had it:
1. Skenes, Pirates (131 AXE, winner)
2. Merrill, Padres (128, finalist)
3. Chourio, Brewers (123, finalist)
4. Masyn Winn, Cardinals (119)
5. Imanaga, Cubs (117)
ROY must-reads:
Why Pirates called up Paul Skenes now — and why he could be MLB’s next great ace
Ranking MLB’s best rookies: Is Paul Skenes or an outfielder named Jackson No. 1?
American League MVP
Finalists:
Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City Royals
Juan Soto, Yankees
Experts’ pick: Judge (9 votes; unanimous)
Doolittle’s take: While the outcome seems like (and almost certainly is) a no-brainer, don’t let that make you lose sight of the overall dynamic around this award. In a nutshell: This is one of the greatest MVP races ever, in terms of historically elite performances from players in the same league.
The dominant performances went beyond the finalists. Five AL players posted at least 7.9 bWAR, led by the three MVP finalists, as well as Boston’s Jarren Duran and Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson, who both finished with higher bWAR totals than Soto. Only once before has the AL had five players produce at that level in the same season — way back in 1912.
While Soto was never far out of the picture, this was a high-octane two-player race for most of the season between the mashing dominance of Judge and the five-tool mastery of the dynamic Witt. Judge won the bWAR battle by a good margin (10.8 to 9.4) and seemed to pull away at the end of the season. Even if you don’t like to think of this in terms of bWAR, it’s hard to look past league-leading totals of 58 homers and 144 RBIs and a third-place .322 batting average, all on the league’s best team.
The real drama surrounding this award is tied to that of the NL: Will we have two unanimous MVP picks? If so, that would be just the second time it’s happened. The first? Last year, when Shohei Ohtani (then with the Angels) and Ronald Acuna Jr. (Braves) pulled it off.
MVP must-reads:
Aaron Judge is the fastest ever to 300 home runs — but how many more will he hit?
Only Juan Soto can decide if his future is with the Yankees
Baseball’s next superstar? Bobby Witt Jr.’s rise to MLB’s top tier
National League MVP
Finalists:
Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers
Francisco Lindor, New York Mets
Ketel Marte, Arizona Diamondbacks
Experts’ pick: Ohtani (9 votes; unanimous)
Doolittle’s take: When the DH became a part of big league baseball back in the 1970s, those who defended it tended to point out how it would allow older superstars to hang around for a few more years. Thus the default image of the DH was the aging, plodding slugger trying to generate occasional glimpses of what he used to be.
Things have changed. Ohtani did not don a baseball glove during a game this season and yet established himself as far and away the most dominant player in the National League. The numbers were staggering: .310/.390/.646, 54 homers, 59 stolen bases. He scored 134 runs and drove in 130, even though 57% of his plate appearances came as the Dodgers’ leadoff hitter.
As with Judge, the intrigue isn’t about whether Ohtani will win, but whether or not he’ll be a unanimous pick. And, let’s face it, there’s not much intrigue about that, either. If Ohtani does it, it’ll be the third time he has been a unanimous selection. No one else has done it even twice.
MVP must-reads:
51 HRs AND stolen bases?! How Shohei Ohtani transformed MLB — again
Breaking down Ohtani’s path to 50/50 — and the historic game that got him there
How Francisco Lindor became the heart and soul of the Mets
American League Cy Young
Finalists:
Seth Lugo, Kansas City Royals
Emmanuel Clase, Cleveland Guardians
Experts’ pick: Skubal (9 votes; unanimous)
Doolittle’s take: Long touted for his upside, Skubal put it all together in 2024, becoming the AL’s most dominant and consistent starting pitcher during the regular season, leading the Tigers to a surprise postseason berth.
Skubal became the AL’s first full-season winner of the pitching triple crown since another Tiger, Justin Verlander, did it in 2011. (Cleveland’s Shane Bieber did it in the shortened 2020 season.) With league-leading totals of 18 wins, 228 strikeouts and a 2.39 ERA, Skubal is well positioned to win his first Cy Young.
Lugo becomes the Royals’ rotation representative in the finalist group, honoring one of MLB’s breakout units in 2024, though teammate Cole Ragans might have been just as worthy. Entering the season, Lugo had never qualified for an ERA title, but in his first campaign for Kansas City, he threw 206⅔ innings, going 16-9 with a 3.00 ERA.
Clase struggled in the postseason but the voting took place before that, and it recognized his unusually dominant season, good enough to justify his presence in this group despite his role as a short reliever. In 74 outings, featuring 47 saves, Clase allowed just five earned runs. He’s still a reliever and, thus, a long shot to win the award, but getting this far says a lot. The last reliever to win a Cy Young Award was the Dodgers’ Eric Gagne in 2003.
Cy Young must-read:
It’s Tarik Skubal time: With season on the line, Tigers turn to ‘best pitcher in the world’
National League Cy Young
Finalists:
Paul Skenes, Pittsburgh Pirates
Zack Wheeler, Philadelphia Phillies
Experts’ pick: Sale (8 votes); Wheeler (1 vote)
Doolittle’s take: What an interesting group of finalists this is. Value-wise, it’s a close race.
Wheeler is the constant here, as he’s enjoying a seven-year run as one of the NL’s top starting pitchers. Wheeler is still looking for his first Cy Young and entered the balloting this time around with his best résumé to date. Yet Wheeler is coming up against two pitchers with arguably more compelling — and very different — narratives.
Skenes is baseball’s ascendant ace. Few pitchers have reached the majors with higher expectations in recent years. He met the hype head-on and, if anything, proved to be even better than we thought. With the innings volume of baseball’s best starters much less than it used to be, it is possible for an elite run preventer to save runs at a clip that puts him among the league leaders during a partial season. It wasn’t Skenes’ fault that he wasn’t called up until the second week of May. All he did after that was post a 1.96 ERA over 23 starts while displaying a remarkable degree of consistency. There wasn’t a true clunker in the bunch.
And yet Sale might have been more dominant if you consider defensive-independent ERA (or FIP), in which Sale’s 2.09 bested Skenes’ 2.45. Also, like Skubal, Sale (18 wins, 2.38 ERA, 225 strikeouts) became the first pitching triple crown winner of his league since 2011. In Sale’s case, he became the first to do it since L.A.’s Clayton Kershaw.
All this from a pitcher who once finished sixth or better in AL Cy Young voting seven straight seasons. He has never won, though, and the last of those seasons was 2018. Sale’s days as a premier starter seemed long gone … and then he did this. That’s a good narrative.
Cy Young must-reads:
Did Chris Sale pitch himself into the HOF this year?
The best stuff in baseball? How Paul Skenes is using his pitches to dominate MLB
American League Manager of the Year
Finalists:
A.J. Hinch, Detroit Tigers
Matt Quatraro, Kansas City Royals
Stephen Vogt, Cleveland Guardians
Experts’ pick: Quatraro (5 votes); Hinch (3 votes); Vogt (1 vote)
Doolittle’s take: The AL Central had four solid teams in 2024, three more than most thought the division would have, and the three surprise clubs are represented here as finalists.
All of these managers have compelling cases. Hinch guided the Tigers to their second-half surge even after Detroit subtracted at the trade deadline and had to navigate around a depleted starting rotation. He has finished in the top five of balloting four times but has never won.
Vogt, a first-time manager filling the shoes of Cleveland legend Terry Francona, also had to lean on his bullpen because of rotation issues and did so with aplomb.
Yet it’s Quatraro who really stands out, leading a Royals team that lost 106 games in 2023 to the postseason. Kansas City had lineup holes and a constantly evolving bullpen picture, yet Quatraro and his staff found a way to leverage his team’s strengths (rotation, defense, Witt) into an October appearance.
National League Manager of the Year
Finalists:
Carlos Mendoza, New York Mets
Pat Murphy, Milwaukee Brewers
Mike Shildt, San Diego Padres
Experts’ pick: Murphy (6 votes); Mendoza (3 votes)
Doolittle’s take: Mendoza had a fantastic first season in the Mets’ dugout, helping the team overcome a sluggish start and eventually end up facing the Dodgers in the NLCS. He did so with quiet, consistent leadership and that bodes well for his ability to last a long time in one of baseball’s most challenging environments.
Shildt, who won the award in 2019 while with the Cardinals, proved to be a feisty presence on a star-laden team with middling expectations that kept rising as the season progressed.
Murphy’s season is hard to beat. Handed the reins of a big league team for a full season for the first time at 65, Murphy was able to put his imprint on the young Brewers. This was no small feat given the departure last winter of his onetime protege, Craig Counsell, arguably the face of the franchise.
Milwaukee went young, suffered rotation shortages and had a number of moving parts in its lineup. Behind Murphy, the Brewers changed their style of play to better accentuate the athleticism on the roster, won 93 games and cruised to another NL Central title.
Earlier awards
Executive of the Year: Brewers president Matt Arnold named exec of the year
Doolittle’s take: I’ve written a couple of times this year that I think the Brewers might be the best-run organization in baseball right now, so that speaks to how I view the work of Arnold and his staff. I also have a kind of organizational mash-up metric I track during the season that considers things such as injuries, rookie contribution, payroll efficiency and in-season acquisitions, and Milwaukee topped that leaderboard.
And yet it’s somewhat stunning that Kansas City’s J.J. Picollo did not win this honor. He oversaw the team’s leap from 106 losses to the playoffs, using free agency to bolster the roster and staying proactive at the trade deadline (and the August waiver period) to provide essential upgrades that put the Royals over the top. It’s hard to do a better one-season job as a baseball ops chief than what Picollo did this season.
All-MLB: 2024 All-MLB First and Second Team winners
Doolittle’s take: Nobody asked me about these picks, but they read as if they did. I had the same first team. On the second team, I might have opted for Matt Chapman over Manny Machado at third base, but if that’s my one note, the selectors did a heck of a job. Or maybe I did.
Gold Gloves: Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr. among 14 first-time Gold Glove winners
Doolittle’s take: For all the uncertainty in making defensive picks, the consensus defensive metric I used more or less mirrored the Gold Glove selections. I would have taken Chourio or Washington’s Jacob Young as one of the NL’s outfielders in place of Ian Happ.
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Jorge Castillo, ESPN Staff Writer
Paul Skenes was named the National League’s Rookie of the Year on Monday, beating out a loaded field after posting one of the best rookie campaigns for a pitcher in major league history.
While fellow finalists Jackson Merrill and Jackson Chourio had seasons that would have unquestionably warranted the honor almost any other year, Skenes’ rookie campaign was historic.
Hyped as a generational talent, Skenes, who debuted less than a year after being selected with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 draft, surpassed expectations in his first taste of the big leagues to become the second Rookie of the Year award winner in Pirates history (Jason Bay, 2004) with 23 of the 30 first-place votes.
Skenes, 22, went 11-3 with a 1.96 ERA in 23 starts across 133 innings. The 1.96 ERA was the lowest for any rookie with at least 20 starts in the Live Ball Era, dating to 1920, and the lowest in baseball in 2024 among pitchers with at least 130 innings pitched. His 0.95 WHIP was tied for best in the National League. His 170 strikeouts were a franchise rookie record. His 4.3 fWAR ranked 10th among major-league pitchers. With the performance, he was named one of the three finalists for the NL Cy Young Award along with veterans Chris Sale and Zack Wheeler. That winner will be announced Wednesday.
On Monday, Merril finished second with the other seven first-place votes and Chourio in third behind Skenes. Merrill, a shortstop in the minors through last season, was the San Diego Padres‘ starting center fielder on opening day at just 20 years old. He excelled in all facets, finishing the season with a .292/.326/.500 slash line, 24 home runs, 90 RBI and 16 steals in 156 games while playing above-average defense. His 5.3 fWAR led all rookies.
Chourio, who doesn’t turn 21 until March, signed an $82 million extension last offseason before making major-league debut and, after a slow start, lived up to the investment. Chourio went on a tear after carrying a .201 batting average and .575 OPS through June 1, batting .305 with 16 home runs and an .888 OPS over his final 97 games. He finished the year with a .275/.327/.464 slash line, 21 home runs, 22 steals and 3.9 fWAR in 148 games, becoming the youngest player ever to post a 20/20 season.
There was little doubt Skenes was a major-league-caliber pitcher out of spring training, but the Pirates chose to not include him on their opening day roster. The rationale was simple: Skenes logged just 6 ⅔ innings as a pro in 2023 after he accumulated 122 ⅔ innings for LSU. So Skenes was sent to Triple A for more seasoning and dominated on a limited workload. In seven starts, Skenes posted a 0.99 ERA with 45 strikeouts across 27 ⅓ innings.
Finally, on May 11, Skenes made his major-league debut against the Chicago Cubs. He surrendered three runs with seven strikeouts over four innings. He would allow three or more earned runs just twice more over his final 22 starts.
His first 11 outings were so dominant (1.90 ERA, 89 strikeouts to 13 walks in 66 ⅓ innings and seven no-hit innings in his final start of the first half against the Milwaukee Brewers) that he was named the starting pitcher for the NL All-Star team, setting the stage for an electric first inning in Arlington against four of the sport’s best hitters. Skenes, the fifth rookie to ever start the exhibition, threw 16 pitches to Steven Kwan, Gunnar Henderson, Juan Soto and Aaron Judge. He walked Soto in an otherwise clean inning. He touched 100 mph and showcased his splinker — a splitter-sinker hybrid. The sequence, like every one of his starts, was must-watch television.
He pitched into the ninth inning for the first time as a pro in his first start out of the All-Star Game, taking a hard-luck 2-1 loss against the St. Louis Cardinals after giving up a run in the ninth. But Pittsburgh, despite adding at the trade deadline, fell out of the wild card race down the stretch.
The Pirates, cautious to not overwork Skenes, had him pitch on extra rest — either five or six days’ — in all of his starts. But he logged at least six innings in 16 of his 23 starts. He threw at least 100 pitches in nine of them. He closed his campaign with three strikeouts in two perfect innings against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium on the penultimate day of the regular season.
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