Tops for contact, eye, and all-around skill
Tommy La Stella, Aaron Hicks, and Mookie Betts pick up our latest awards
Baseball will bestow its most coveted annual honors later this week — the Cy Young Awards on Wednesday and the Most Valuable Player Awards on Thursday.
I also have yearend citations to hand out this week — three in all. These particular awards are not of the same caliber as the Cy or the MVP — no dispute there — though they are similar in one respect. They, too, reward outstanding performances over the truncated 2020 schedule.
You may recall that I actually began my own award season last week, announcing the winners of these three honors for 2020, each named after a baseball immortal who epitomized a specific skill:
Ted Williams Award (batting): Juan Soto, Nationals
Lou Gehrig Award (scoring): Freddie Freeman, Braves
Babe Ruth Award (power): Juan Soto, Nationals
This week’s group is struck from a similar template. Each award carries the name of a Hall of Famer from the post-World War II era, and each is given for superior play in the season that recently ended.
Nellie Fox Award (contact)
Nellie Fox might be one of the lesser-known honorees in Cooperstown’s Plaque Gallery. Fox played second base, primarily for the White Sox, from 1947 to 1965. His greatest season undoubtedly came in 1959, when he won the American League’s MVP Award and led the Sox to their first pennant in 40 years.
Fox had an amazing ability to put his bat on the ball. He struck out just 216 times in 9,232 at-bats, yielding a contract rate of .977, far and away the best for any postwar Hall of Famer. (Contact rate is the percentage of at-bats that did not end in strikeouts.)
Only three other Hall of Fame honorees with at least 5,000 postwar plate appearances posted rates over .950 for the 1945-2020 period: Red Schoendienst at .959, George Kell at .957, and Tony Gwynn at .953.
Nobody in this free-swinging age can match those outstanding figures, though Tommy La Stella did come close for the Angels and Athletics this year. La Stella, a second baseman like Fox, struck out just 12 times in 196 at-bats, giving him a contact rate of .939. He was the only player with at least 186 plate appearances (the minimum to qualify for the batting title) to exceed .900.
That makes La Stella the easy winner of this year’s Nellie Fox Award for contact. Here are the top 10:
Tommy La Stella, Angels-Athletics, .939
D.J. LeMahieu, Yankees, .892
Nolan Arenado, Rockies, .890
Ketel Marte, Diamondbacks, .884
David Fletcher, Angels, .879
Yuli Gurriel, Astros, .872
Didi Gregorius, Phillies, .870
Jeff McNeil, Mets, .869
Whit Merrifield, Royals, .867
Hanser Alberto, Orioles, .863
Rickey Henderson Award (batting eye)
Rickey Henderson was an excellent batter, as certified by his lifetime total of 3,055 hits. He was an excellent baserunner, too, as proven by his 1,406 stolen bases, 468 more than anyone else who played big-league ball.
Both of those facets of Henderson’s game were widely recognized and applauded. But he was never given sufficient credit for a third attribute — his knowledge of the strike zone. Henderson received 2,129 unintentional walks during his career, yielding a batting eye rate (abbreviated as EY) of .160. (EY is calculated by dividing unintentional walks by the number of plate appearances after intentional walks have been subtracted.)
Only Ted Williams (.190) and Mickey Mantle (.162) had better batting eye rates among postwar Hall of Famers. But Williams already has an award named after him (see above), and Mantle was not as disciplined at the plate as Henderson. Mantle had more strikeouts (1,710) than unintentional walks (1,585) during his career. Henderson’s totals: 1,694 SO, 2,129 UIBB.
So that’s why this honor for best batting eye is called the Rickey Henderson Award. The 2020 version goes to Aaron Hicks, the Yankees center fielder. He drew 40 unintentional walks this year, giving him an outstanding EY of .190, nine points better than anybody else. Here are the 10 leaders, all with at least 186 plate appearances:
Aaron Hicks, Yankees, .190
Carlos Santana, Indians, .181
Ronald Acuna Jr., Braves, .180
Christian Yelich, Brewers, .180
Bryce Harper, Phillies, .174
Joey Votto, Reds, .162
Paul Goldschmidt, Cardinals, .160
Juan Soto, Nationals, .158
Anthony Rendon, Angels, .157
Cavan Biggio, Blue Jays, .155
Yasmani Grandal, White Sox, .155
Willie Mays Award (fielding-batting combination)
Willie Mays. No introduction needed, right?
Great hitter for average (.302 lifetime). Great power hitter (660 homers). Great baserunner (338 stolen bases). Great fielder (12 Gold Gloves). The complete package.
That last number, as high as it is, doesn’t really give him his due. Mays’s 12 Gold Gloves tie him with Roberto Clemente for the most ever won by an outfielder, yet the award wasn’t introduced until 1957, his sixth season with the Giants. If they had been handed out Gold Gloves his entire career, he probably would have won 15.
Only 16 players are eligible in a given season for the Willie Mays Award, which recognizes the year’s greatest blend of fielding and batting skill. The first requirement is that a player must win a Gold Glove, and only eight of those are handed out to position players in each league. Those fielding honorees are then ranked by bases per out, the best measure of batting ability.
The winner of the 2020 Willie Mays Award is Mookie Betts of the Dodgers, the National League’s best right fielder, who reached precisely one base for every out that he made at the plate, putting him far ahead of the other Gold Glove winners. Here are the top 10:
Mookie Betts, Dodgers, 1.000
Trent Grisham, Padres, .873
Anthony Rizzo, Cubs, .760
Luis Robert, White Sox, .736
Cesar Hernandez, Indians, .713
Joey Gallo, Rangers, .684
Nolan Arenado, Rockies, .667
Kolten Wong, Cardinals, .655
J.P. Crawford, Mariners, .640
Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Rangers, .628