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.
The National League has presented a difficult challenge to this endeavor. Since his electric May 11 debut, Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes has provided some of the most captivating story lines in the sport. So, while there have been other players clearly deserving of attention and praise, resisting the urge to simply write about Skenes every week hasn’t always been easy. And though we’ve avoided having the Rookie of the Year race dominate the conversation, the NL’s version of that award felt like a foregone conclusion for a while.
That is no longer the case, because Padres star Jackson Merrill has not only willed his way into the ROY conversation, but he’s kickstarted his team’s surge back into the National League West race.
The 21-year-old, who joined Skenes on the All-Star team yet has received far less attention, continued his sensational rookie season Sunday, delivering a dramatic walk-off homer to give San Diego a 3–2 comeback win over the New York Mets.
The Kid is unbelievable 🤯 pic.twitter.com/rdXTTQ41Ca
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) August 25, 2024
It was Merrill’s fifth time hitting a game-tying or go-ahead home run in the ninth inning or later, the most ever for a player 21 years old or younger. And it’s just the latest standout moment in a second half that’s been full of them for a player leading baseball’s hottest team.
The Padres’ 24–9 record since the All-Star break is the best in the league. San Diego began the second half with a 34.5% chance at making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs. Since then, that number has rocketed up to 95.7%, with the team still maintaining a puncher’s chance at winning the division, trailing the Los Angeles Dodgers by 4.5 games entering Monday.
It’s taken contributions from everybody to reach this point, but Merrill has stood out above the rest. His 1.7 fWAR since the break leads the team and ranks 10th among all hitters. In 32 games, he’s slashed .317/.344/.633, giving him the third-highest slugging percentage in the National League during that span. He’s tied for the team lead with seven second-half home runs, and is tops in runs scored (25), RBI (26), doubles (nine) and triples (four).
Given his tremendous defensive value and strides at the plate, Merrill is putting together one of the best rookie seasons by a center fielder over the past decade.
Top WAR by Rookie Center Fielders (2015–24)
That Merrill has recently overtaken Skenes as the betting favorite to win Rookie of the Year is even more remarkable considering the fact that Skenes has been sharp himself during the season’s second half (even as the Pirates have fallen out of playoff contention). In six starts since the break, Skenes has a 2.63 ERA and held opposing hitters to a .191 batting average.
So how will this all shake out? Skenes is likely going to get no more than six more starts the rest of the way, and that’s assuming he’s not shut down if and when Pittsburgh gets mathematically eliminated from postseason contention. And if six (high quality) starts is all it took for Skenes to get passed up by Merrill in the Rookie of the Year race, then he’ll need to be even better over the next month to reclaim pole position. And while team performance isn’t as much of a factor in voters’ minds for this award compared to the MVP, that Merrill will be in the thick of a division hunt can only help his chances if he keeps performing well.
Skenes’s standing as a former No. 1 overall pick, college star and overall celebrity status made him catnip for headlines following his debut, and his dominant play only fueled the flames. All that contributed to the idea that the Rookie of the Year race has long been over. Merrill’s excellence has changed that, and while we’ll keep searching high and low for other notable rookies to talk about, it’s a fun development that the race at the top is now jam packed with intrigue.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as National League Rookie Roundup: Jackson Merrill Is Chasing Down Paul Skenes.
