Welcome to the Rookie Roundup, a weekly look-in on baseball’s best and most interesting first-year players. Last week, we took a deep dive into Nolan Schanuel’s unique path to the big leagues and his part in the Los Angeles Angels’ rebuild. Up next is a check-in on San Diego Padres star Jackson Merrill and what’s become a two-horse race for the National League Rookie of the Year award.
If there’s anything resembling a mission statement for this weekly rookie roundup, it’s to highlight as diverse a group of promising first-year players as possible. There have been over 200 players to make their big-league debuts this season, and many others who debuted previously still retain rookie status. Most of these players will go on to have relatively anonymous careers, but the goal here has been to highlight as big a pool of interesting standouts as possible.
