How one draft set the Stars up for now and the future
Front offices throughout the NHL are willing to invest what amounts to a miniature fortune on travel so their amateur scouting staffs can find the players they believe can help them have a brighter future.
And that’s not even including additional scouting costs such as salaries or the investment that comes with eventually trying to develop those draft picks into NHL players.
Every front office knows there’s an art to drafting and developing. But to draft and develop the type of players who could potentially become franchise cornerstones? That can be a painstaking process that might take several years to master, with the sobering realization it might never happen.
Now you’re starting to understand what made the 2017 NHL draft a defining moment for the Dallas Stars. They didn’t find just one franchise player. They found a franchise defenseman, a franchise goaltender and a franchise forward in one draft when they used their first three picks to select defenseman Miro Heiskanen, goaltender Jake Oettinger and wing Jason Robertson.
“We’re hoping we can get one or two guys in each draft that can just play for us and be serviceable and good players,” one NHL amateur scout who works for another team told ESPN. “They got a No. 1 defenseman who can run a power play, a starting goaltender and a top-six forward in one draft. Even if they didn’t get Oettinger and just got Heiskanen and Robertson, that’s still a rock-star draft. There is not a word to describe three guys of that caliber. It’s scary good.”
Building through the draft and developing that talent is how teams win in the NHL. The Tampa Bay Lightning used five drafts in the span of seven years to acquire cornerstones Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy. The Colorado Avalanche used four drafts over seven years to select cornerstones Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar.
But there’s more to it. The Lightning still had to develop the talent they drafted and the undrafted free agents they procured to support what they had beyond their cornerstones. The Avs parlayed players who were once thought to be cornerstones in their long-term plans and traded them to eventually strengthen their core.
The end result: The Lightning and Avalanche combined to win the past three Stanley Cups and serve as a blueprint for others to emulate.
“When we got into the [flat salary] cap world, the parity world, if you make a mistake signing a free agent, you don’t get out of that,” Stars general manager Jim Nill said. “The best way to stay out of that? It’s the draft and developing young, homegrown players that can have success.”
In the 1990s, the Dallas Cowboys had their triplets in Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith, who led them to three Super Bowls. Could it be possible that 30 years later, the Stars have their own version of a title-winning trio who might help bring a Cup or two to Big D? They’ll look to take a step in that direction with the opportunity to wrap up their first-round series with the Minnesota Wild in Game 6 on Friday night.
What the Stars did in order to refine Heiskanen, Oettinger and Robertson to reach this stage of their respective careers was a gradual process. And while they each showed continual flashes of promise, this season provided even more confirmation.
Heiskanen was already a top-pairing defenseman who could play in every situation. This season he broke through to score a career-high 73 points, which more than doubled his point total from the 2021-22 season.
Oettinger went from sharing the net to becoming a full-time No. 1 starter who was in the top seven in games started, saves, save percentage, goals-against average and shutouts. Robertson, who came into this season with 125 career points, improved to 109 points and his second straight 40-goal season.
Beyond their success in the 2017 draft, the Stars have quietly created one of the stronger farm-to-table approaches in the NHL. Their current iteration started in 2015 with center Roope Hintz. It has since continued to include center Ty Dellandrea, defenseman Thomas Harley and center Wyatt Johnston, with prospects such as Mavrik Bourque and Logan Stankoven lined up to be next.
Exactly how did the Stars set themselves on such a strong course in such short order?
HOW THE STARS came away with a franchise-altering haul in 2017 actually can be traced to the 1990s and the Detroit Red Wings. Nill was hired at the start of the 1994-95 season by the Red Wings to serve as their director of player development before eventually becoming assistant GM.
A year later, the Red Wings hired Kitchener Rangers head coach/GM Joe McDonnell to be an amateur scouts before he was promoted to director of amateur scouting before the start of the 2003-04 season.
Nill was hired by the Stars before the 2013-14 season and he hired McDonnell to be Dallas’ director of amateur scouting.
Their time with the Red Wings was foundational for several reasons. At the time, the Red Wings were at the vanguard of scouting well before the salary cap made it en vogue. They had already established a pipeline in Europe in addition to North America. That helped them draft a collection of prospects who reached the NHL, such as Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Jiri Fischer, Niklas Kronwall, Jiri Hudler, Valteri Filppula, Jimmy Howard and Johan Franzen, among many others.
Nill said he was “very fortunate” to be with the Red Wings at that time because of what he learned from Scotty Bowman, Jim Devellano and Ken Holland about the intricacies of both building a team and winning with them. Nill said what resonated with him is how the Red Wings’ management was able to build a bridge of internal talent that allowed the franchise to win four Stanley Cups while transitioning from those teams led by Steve Yzerman and Lidstrom to the group headlined by Datsyuk and Zetterberg.
“They did a great job of drafting and were one of the first teams that went to Europe and into Russia,” Nill said of the Red Wings. “They had a couple drafts similar to what we had in 2017 when they drafted Lidstrom and [Sergei] Federov. They knocked it dead too.”
But there is something to be said about the parts Nill and McDonnell played from the time they joined the franchise.
“The stuff McDonnell and Nill did in Detroit when McDonnell was running the amateur draft speaks for itself,” one NHL amateur scouting director told ESPN. “I would think the fact he left Detroit with Jim Nill speaks highly of his dedication. Not that I want to speak for Jim Nill, but I imagine knowing Joe well and the success he’s had identifying talent speaks highly in the world of hockey.”
Both the amateur scouting director and amateur scout who were interviewed by ESPN provided a composite look at what has made the Stars successful with their drafts.
The amateur scout said McDonnell and one of his most trusted scouts, Mark Leach, who also spent several years in the Red Wings organization, are known for being easy to speak with. That, in turn, can create the sort of environment that allows their scouts to potentially feel confident in expressing their observations, the amateur scout said.
“I get the sense the guys who are good in those positions listen really well,” the amateur scout said. “As the leader of an amateur department, if you have high stress, high anxiety and feel the pressure of making a pick, that feeds down to other guys. You don’t want to do anything for your staff that will make them not want to share something or give their opinions that may go against what is being said.”
The amateur scouting director said there are teams that look to draft a certain type of player and that the Stars have a defined idea of what they want. The scouting director said the past few drafts have shown the Stars targeted skilled forwards with offensive upside in Bourque and Johnston, the first-round picks in 2020 and 2021. They’ve also shown that size is something they seek in their defensemen, which was evidenced by taking the 6-foot-3 Harley in 2019 along with their first-round pick last year, Lian Bichsel, who is 6-5.
“Depending upon their strategy, they seem to be able to find talent. Especially later in the first round or with those early second-round picks,” the scouting director said. “They are able to find very good players.”
That’s the context for how the Stars are able to identify talent. They have people who have done it for decades and have built a staff with eight amateur scouts, European scouting director Kari Takko and McDonnell.
AS FOR HOW it all came together for the Stars in 2017? Nill admits there was some luck involved.
The Stars finished with the seventh-worst record in the NHL and had a 5.8% chance of winning the lottery, a 6.1% chance of getting the second pick and a 6.4% chance of picking third.
Having such a poor record opened the door for them to trade Patrick Eaves to the Anaheim Ducks for a conditional second-round pick. The condition for the Stars to get a first-round pick was that Eaves play in at least half the Ducks’ playoff games through the first two rounds.
The Stars entered the 2017 draft with the No. 3 pick from the lottery, Eaves meeting the conditions to flip that second-round pick into another first-round pick (No. 26 overall), while also having a high second-round pick (No. 39).
“We were sitting there during the draft lottery and when you move up from that spot to No. 3, that changes your whole mindset,” Nill said. “You are picking high in the first round and then pretty high in the second round. We got lucky with the lottery. You’re looking at a whole different group.”
The expectation was that centers Nico Hischier and Nolan Patrick were going to be off the board when it came time for the Stars to pick third. Nill said Heiskanen was on the short list of three or four possibilities for the team to take when it was their turn. Heiskanen projected as a responsible two-way defenseman who could someday do everything required of a top-pairing option.
Nill said the Stars’ scouts watched Oettinger “all the time” when he played at the United States National Team Development Program. That gave the Stars confidence that Oettinger fit the archetype of a contemporary goaltender, an athletic puck-stopper who has size packaged in a 6-5 body. Plus, they knew they had to start thinking about the future with Ben Bishop getting older.
As for Robertson? Nill said they knew he had high-end offensive ability and the intelligence to go with that skill. But the question they kept coming back to was his skating and whether he could be a good enough skater in the NHL.
“Is he too weak and needs more strength? Is there a hitch? That’s where player development is so important,” Nill said. “In the end with Jason, we were looking for someone who could score and with the guys that were left, we were fortunate to get him. The next part after we drafted him was for him to work with our player development staff.”
HEISKANEN, OETTINGER AND ROBERTSON are also reminders of how developing the players comes with its own set of challenges.
Now the Stars’ director of player personnel, former NHL center Rich Peverley was the team’s director of player development for six seasons. Peverley explained that Heiskanen, Oettinger and Robertson are prime examples of how every player’s development path is different.
Peverley said Heiskanen, who debuted as a 19-year-old, actually could have played in the NHL at 18. But the front office wanted him to get an additional year of development and getting stronger and faster. They knew he was going to play in several international competitions either for the Finnish under-20 men’s national team or for the Finnish national team while logging heavy minutes for his club team, HIFK. It amounted to Heiskanen playing a combined 70-plus games for club and country.
The Stars knew Oettinger was close to being ready. He had the maturity and was physically ready to make the jump. But they wanted him to get more experience at a higher level while also spending time with coaches who could help hone his skills. That’s why they were patient in watching Oettinger spend three seasons at Boston University, where he compiled a 2.34 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage in more than 100 games.
Nill told ESPN this season that the pandemic significantly altered the Stars’ development plan for Oettinger. They wanted him to play more than 50 AHL games in 2019-20, but the changes brought on by COVID-19 meant the Stars used him as a third goalie in the bubble, which led to Oettinger becoming Dallas’ backup when Bishop got hurt.
“We were concerned. Are we getting ahead of course with him?” Nill said. “My job is to worry about today, tomorrow and 10 years down the road. … Was it better to have him come back and be a backup or have him play in the AHL?”
Robertson’s situation was also unique. As Nill said, the Stars wanted to address concerns about his skating. Peverley added that the team also worked with Robertson in developing an offseason training program and creating a nutrition plan.
“I think everyone has had a good hand in his development,” Peverley said. “He came from a different background in terms of a hockey background being from California. He didn’t know how to work out, how to train in the offseason and didn’t know how to follow the nutritional things we preached. That was something he bought in and was all-in because he wanted to play in the NHL.”
Robertson began the 2018-19 season with the OHL’s Kingston Frontenacs before he was traded to the Niagara IceDogs. Jody Hull, who was the IceDogs’ associate coach when the team acquired Robertson, described how Peverley and the Stars were inclusive rather than invasive when it came to Robertson’s development.
Hull, now an associate coach with the WHL’s Tri-City Americans, said the key to development is that the NHL team and the team prospects are playing for share a common goal: They work together to make the player better.
They created a plan to address Robertson’s skating. One way they did that was to improve Robertson’s conditioning, which Hull said can be a contributing factor toward improving skating.
“Rich was awesome,” Hull said of Peverley. “He was up front and we talked about what we thought were deficiencies and areas Jason needed to improve. At the end of the day, what Dallas wants to see are the same things that will benefit the Niagara IceDogs in the same way. It was a hand-in-hand relationship.”
Both the IceDogs and Stars saw growth from Robertson, with him scoring 25 goals and 79 points in 38 games for Niagara. Between the Frontenacs and IceDogs, Robertson scored 48 goals and 117 points in his final OHL season.
He spent one season in the AHL, where he finished with 25 goals and 47 assists in 60 games before he was called up to Dallas for the 2020-21 season.
Robertson finished second in voting for the Calder Trophy, the award for the NHL’s best rookie.
“You have to establish trust and there has to be honesty there,” Peverley said. “I am a firm believer and have always been taught this. You can’t go in and impose your systems and way of playing on a junior player. You have to go with what the coaching staff is teaching. It’s about establishing pro habits because they all want to see the player be successful as a pro. It’s speaking the same language as coaches and management. If you do that, the players will have no confusion.”
FIVE GAMES INTO their first-round series against the Wild, the contributions made by the Stars’ latest crop of homegrown talent has been there for all to witness.
Heiskanen is averaging more than 29 minutes and had four points in the Stars’ 7-3 win to tie the series at 1-1. Oettinger has a 2.19 GAA, a .925 save percentage and provided a 27-save shutout for a huge Game 5 win. Robertson has six points, including a goal and assist in Game 5, while averaging almost 20 minutes in ice time.
Hintz broke out for a hat trick in Game 2 to cap a four-point night and has 11 points in five games. Johnston has only one point, but he’s operating as a second-line center and Natural Stat Trick’s data shows he leads Stars forwards in 5-on-5 ice time. Dellandrea is receiving third-line minutes and leads Stars forwards in short-handed ice time. Harley, who played only six regular-season games, has been featured in all five playoff games and is serving as a third-pairing defenseman.
That’s seven homegrown players who are all 26 or younger having an impact in the playoffs. And when you include older players such as captain Jamie Benn, who was drafted by the club in 2007, and forward Joel Kiviranta, an undrafted free agent the Stars signed and developed in the AHL for a season, it gives them 12 homegrown players on their active roster.
“People will say, ‘We draft who we want,’ and I say that’s hogwash. They care. These teams do care,” the amateur scout said. “Not saying Dallas doesn’t but I get the sense they have guys they like and they pick those guys who fit into what they are doing in Dallas.”
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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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