First, the Rookie of the Year Awards.
AL-1. Dustin Ackley-The rookie leader in fWAR in the AL was actually second place Michael Pineda, at 3.4, followed by a 3-way tie between Ackley, Brett Lawrie, and Ivan Nova (Desmond Jennings was also pretty close). However, Pineda and Nova played full seasons, while Lawrie played in only 43 games, and Ackley played in 90 games. 43 games didn’t seem like enough, but 90 games is just over half the season. Ackley’s WAR seems surprising, but he did it in a number of ways; about .9 WAR came from his batting 117 wRC+, meaning he was about 17% better than the league average hitter (going off of wOBA). About .1 WAR came from his base running and .2 from his fielding, meaning the rest came from the fact that he did all of that while playing second base. In any case, I decided his 2.7 fWAR in 90 games was impressive enough in a large enough portion of the season.
2. Michael Pineda-See above
3. Zach Britton-he was pretty close with 2.5 fWAR, and I wanted to vote for an Oriole.
