Colorado Rockies foes: 2020 American League awards predictions

Just because games have not started yet doesn’t mean that we can’t make some predictions for both the Colorado Rockies and future award winners.

The 2020 Major League Baseball season was supposed to start today. Even though it has been postponed indefinitely, that doesn’t mean that the hype train just comes to a stop. In the next few days and weeks, we here at Rox Pile will be making some predictions for both the Colorado Rockies and some award predictions for both leagues. Today, I’ll predict the winners (and both runners-up) for the American League awards.

Just for transparency, these were my predictions in both leagues for 2019.

AL MVP – Mike Trout

AL Cy Young Award – Justin Verlander

AL ROY – Eloy Jimenez

NL MVP – Paul Goldschmidt

NL Cy Young Award- Aaron Nola

NL ROY – Pete Alonso

I was feeling terrific through the American League, and then everything fell apart in the National League. Paul Goldschmidt is a whole lot of yikes. And Aaron Nola took a giant step back instead of continuing his progression from an impressive 2018.

I’m putting that all behind me now and ready to go 6-for-6 in the AL this season as I predict Rookie of the Year, Comeback Player of the Year, Manager of the Year, Reliever of the Year, Cy Young, and MVP.

Rookie of the Year Predictions

Winner: Jesus Luzardo, P  – Oakland Athletics

2nd place: Luis Robert, OF – Chicago White Sox; 3rd place:  Evan White, 1B – Seattle Mariners

Let’s start things off with a bit of an upset. Luis Robert is one of the top prospects in the game and will start immediately for the Chicago White Sox. He has 30 home run and 30 stolen base potential, but will the White Sox let him take off after stifling Tim Anderson and Yoan Moncada in seasons past? I don’t think so.

Evan White edges out Jo Adell for third place because he is guaranteed to be on the Opening Day roster for the Mariners. With the potentially shortened season, we may not see Adell for the majority of the 2020 season. However, if Adell were to make the Opening Day squad, he would pass White and maybe even challenge for the top prize with Luzardo.

Unfortunately for Robert, White, and possibly Adell, they won’t accrue enough eye-popping numbers to keep Jesus Luzardo and his playoff-bound Oakland A’s from a Rookie of the Year title. Fans were excited about Luzardo last year, but injuries kept him off the major league diamond until September, where he was lights out.

He pitched 12 innings in relief for the A’s and struck out 16 batters while collecting two holds and two saves. Now he is in line for a full workload in the starting rotation. He will likely be a big reason that Oakland makes the playoffs (as a wildcard team), and that will be enough to nudge him ahead of Robert on a non-playoff team like the White Sox.

Manager of the Year Predictions

1st place: Joe Maddon – Los Angeles Angels

2nd place: Kevin Cash – Tampa Bay Rays; 3rd place: Dusty Baker – Houston Astros

First off, there is no universe where I think that Dusty Baker can win this award. I like to get crazy with my predictions, but not entirely off the rails. However, there could be a swell of support for him navigating the Houston Astros turbulent season as they stroll towards a fourth-straight division title. He won’t win, but don’t be surprised if he ends up this high with the voters.

With the Boston Red Sox floundering, the Tampa Bay Rays are the last team standing against the New York Yankees. If Kevin Cash can snatch the AL East crown from under New York’s nose and guide the Rays to back-to-back playoff appearances, he will garner a lot of credit and attention when the votes come in.

It seems like the other 14 managers will be battling for second place this season. Joe Maddon has to be the favorite this year if things go his way out West. He’s got a roster that boasts the best player in baseball (Mike Trout), a World Series-winning free-agent acquisition (Anthony Rendon), and a must-watch two-way player (Shohei Ohtani), in one of baseball’s most important markets.

If he can come in and take the Angels to the playoffs for only the second time in Mike Trout’s career, he could be a unanimous choice. Trout turns 29 this season, and baseball fans and writers will be giddy to see the best player in the game competing in the postseason and happily give credit to the new manager in the Angels’ dugout.

Reliever of the Year Predictions

1st place: Taylor Rogers – Minnesota Twins

2nd place: Nick Anderson – Tampa Bay Rays; 3rd place: Aroldis Chapman – New York Yankees

Fun fact: Since the current iteration of the Reliever of the Year award was founded in 2014, the saves leader in the American League has only won the award in two of the six seasons. They were Zach Britton with Baltimore in 2014 and Edwin Diaz with Seattle in 2018.

That’s how I am justifying not putting Aroldis Chapman at the top of this prediction. If I were a betting man, I would put money on him, leading the AL in saves, plus being in a big market with a great team can never hurt. But these are my predictions, and I need to get a little wonky at times to stay on brand.

I originally had Nick Anderson at the top of this list. Still, I think the Rays see him as their best reliever, and I can see him pitching in any number of situations. This versatility could result in Anderson not piling up enough saves to catch the voter’s eyes.

He was lights out during the second half of 2019 with Tampa Bay. Anderson was traded from Miami and struck out 41 batters in 21 1/3 innings. If he can continue to build off that, he will become the Josh Hader of the American League.

That brings us to the award winner: Taylor Rogers. I wouldn’t blame the casual baseball fan for not knowing who he is, but he’s the closer for a Minnesota team that will be battling with the Cleveland Indians for the AL Central title all season. Vegas has the Twins over/under for wins set at 90.5, and I expect Rogers to be closing the majority, if not all, of their games this season.

Over the past two seasons, Rogers has tallied a 2.62 ERA, 0.976 WHIP, and 2.59 FIP with a 30.7 percent strikeout rate and a 5.0 percent walk rate. Those numbers put him in elite company with himself. I expect Rogers to continue that trend this year earn the Reliever of the Year award for a Twins team in the thick of a playoff chase.

Cy Young Predictions

1st place: Gerrit Cole – New York Yankees

2nd place: Justin Verlander – Houston Astros; 3rd place: Mike Clevinger – Cleveland Indians

I’ve seen a lot of early predictions favoring Shane Bieber over Mike Clevinger, but I’ll take the slightly longer track record of Clevinger over his teammate. He has increased his K-BB percentage and decreased his ERA in all four of his major league seasons with Cleveland. The 2011 draft pick could’ve ended up in this spot last season if he didn’t miss two months with a muscle strain in his upper back.

Death, taxes, and Justin Verlander pitching 200 innings. The reigning Cy Young winner has reached that mark in 12 of his previous 13 seasons and has struck out at least 250 batters in three of his last four seasons. With the Astros “busy” offseason and the fact that Verlander finally won his second Cy Young in 2019, there is an opportunity for a new face to win the award.

That new face will more than likely be Gerrit Cole. The new toy in New York could’ve easily won this award last season, but Cole now has the stage all to himself, and the biggest spotlight in the sport is shining on him. He led the league with a 2.50 ERA, 2.64 FIP, 185 ERA+, and 326 strikeouts in 2019, and the Yankees rewarded him with a massive contract this offseason.

He will be the face of the Yankees rotation for years to come, and adding some personal silverware in his first season feels strangely inevitable. The knight in shining pinstripes leading New York to a second-straight division title and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs will be more than enough to lock up Cole’s first Cy Young award.

Most Valuable Player Predictions

1st place: Mike Trout, OF – Los Angeles

2nd place: Francisco Lindor, SS – Cleveland; 3rd place: Alex Bregman, 3B – Houston

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Some awards are so open that the predictions can be as crazy as you want them to be, and then there are the awards that there is only one sensible choice. The American League MVP is one of the sensible awards. As long as Mike Trout is healthy, he will always be the front runner for the award, and other predictions are just different for contrarian’s sake.

All Houston Astros players are going to get dinged in the awards voting for their role in the sign-stealing scandal that dominated the offseason. That much we know. But at what point will the results prove too great for the voters to ignore? It will be a new case study with Justin Verlander in the Cy Young race and Alex Bregman in the MVP voting.

The 2019 runner-up will likely continue his rise as an elite talent in the game. If he can maintain his gains in the power department, and reach double-digits in stolen bases for an Astros team expected to win the division title, he will still garner enough votes to crack the top three.

At least I could have a little creativity with the runners-up in this award. Francisco Lindor is entering his sixth season in the majors and looks to build on a successful first five years. He has won two gold gloves, two silver sluggers, appeared in the All-Star game in every full season he has played and has finished top-10 in the MVP voting three times.

2020 is the year that he cracks the top-three. There are whispers that Lindor may move out of the leadoff spot for the Indians this season, and that would further his MVP case with more RBI opportunities. The voters love themselves some counting numbers. His blend of power and speed, plus the Indians playoff chase, will have him at the forefront of voter’s minds at the end of the regular season.

Michael Nelson Trout is the best baseball player on the planet right now. In my opinion, the only things preventing him from picking up his fourth MVP award at the end of the 2020 season are voter fatigue and if the Angels don’t reach the postseason yet again. One of my season-long predictions is that the Angels will make the playoffs, so now it comes down to the voters and whether they get fed up with voting for the same incredible talent year after year.

Trout has been nothing short of phenomenal his entire career. Since his first full season in 2012, the $400 million man has averaged 124 runs, 40 home runs, 104 RBI, 28 steals, with a .308/.422/.587 slash line per 162 games. Still not impressed?

He’s finished in the top-four of MVP voting in eight straight seasons and has seven Silver Slugger titles to go with his three MVP awards. The only thing missing is some postseason success, and if that happens in 2020, Trout will likely stroll to another accolade.