What Happens After You Win Rookie Of The Year?

I was briefly watching ESPN recently and they shows stats on Dustin Pedroia. Last year he was the AL MVP, but it totally slipped my mind that he won Rookie of the Year (ROY) the year before. I recently wrote a post analyzing the 2009 Basketball HOF class and two of the three players won the ROY. This got me thinking, how good have recent Rookies of the Years been after they win the award? Are sports writers good at determining future success of players? Does it seem to be ROY have one great year and then fade away?

Not accounting for last year because the future hasn't happened yet to determine how good the players are, here's a list of AL and NL ROY

2007- NL Ryan Braun; AL- Dustin Pedroia
2006- NL Hanley Rameriz; AL- Justin Verlander
2005- NL Ryan Howard; AL- Houston Street
2004- NL Jason Bay; AL- Bobby Crosby
2003- NL Dontrelle Willis; AL- Angel Berroa

Some other notables that won ROY and are still playing are: Albert Pujols, Ichiro, Rafeal Furcal, Derek Jeter, Nomar, Carlos Beltran, and Kerry Wood.

Overall this is a pretty good list. Braun and Hanley are flat out amazing and will soon probably win MVPs (in fact Hanley deserved it over J-Roll), Pedroia, Howard, and Pujols have MVPs, and Jason Bay isn't amazing but he's darn good. The two Oakland selections, Street and Crosby, are unfair to say their bad because they have had careers marred by injury. The other two pitchers left, Verlander and D-Train, are somewhat enigmas. In Verlander's 3 years of pitching, he has had two damn fine years and one terrible year (last year). Dontrelle has always showed signs of decline but it seems fitting that when he was moved into the same rotation as Verlander, he blew up and was forced to play in single-A he was so bad. And as for Angel Berrea, well he never ever came close to matching getting HR and SB ever in his career.

The NBA looks like a different story. Maybe because it only has one ROY instead of two, the list of ROY are a pretty elite class.

2007- Brandon Roy
2006- Chris Paul
2005- Emeka Okafor
2004- LeBron James
2003- Amare Stoudemire
2002- Pau Gasol

James is just flat out fantastic and will win the MVP this year, Paul is a legit MVP contender (and was last year), and Gasol, Roy, and Stoudemire are damn good elite players as well. Okafor is a pretty good player as well, but is nowhere in the same category as the other five guys (although neither is the runner up in '05- Ben Gordon). However, I think it's interesting to note that there are no current MVP winner among these players- unlike the MLB.

Here's a list of offensive and defensive ROY from the NFL

2007: O- Adrian Peterson; D- Patrick Willis
2006: O- Vince Young; D- DeMeco Ryans
2005: O- Cadallac Williams; D- Shawn Merriman
2004: O- Big Ben; D- Jonathan Vilma
2003: O- Anquan Boldin; D- Terrel Suggs

The defense is a not the best of the best seemingly but all are still players any team would pay a lot of money to play for them. In fact three out of the next four defensive ROY in later years are: Julius Peppers, Brian Urlacher, and Javon Kearse. The offensive on the other hand is a bit shaky. AP is amazing and Anquan Boldin is one of the best receivers out there. But after that the list goes downhill. Big Ben is fine for the Steelers organization but as I've said in a previous post, I don't trust him. Vince Young has helped "win" games for the Titans but he's not really panning out to be worth the #3 overall pick and lost his job to fucking Kerry Collins. And as for Cadallic, after player an ungodly number of downs his rookie year, his season has been marred by injury and ineffectiveness. Other notable offensive ROY are: Clinton Portis, Edge, and Randy Moss, but in between was Mike Anderson and the A-Train Anthony Thomas

So what do these lists tell us about the players? Well for MLB it seems that offensive ROY, when healthy, pan out to be the games elite. However for pitchers, it seems to be that they peter out after a few years. Maybe it's because they were overworked so young and that's why they were so good but all that work catches up to them. Or maybe it's just dumb luck. You seem to be in good shape if you win the NBA ROY seeing as all recent winners are above average players and all but one (Okefar) can change a franchise (or at least be really really really fucking good for one). As for the NFL, like the NBA, you seem to be in good shape if you win the defensive ROY. But on the other hand, it may be good for your career if you don't win offensive ROY.

Now yes, there is obviously a sample size issue and a causality issue. I don't think these need to be explained further but obviously all my 'analysis' is subject to extreme scrutiny. But that being said I think there are some logical explanations nonetheless for these "trends".

-Offensive baseball ROY- Players go through a lot before they make it to the big leagues. They have to go through years in a minor league system, honing their craft before they can play pro. So when young guys are brought up to the majors, not only do they have years of practice but GMs have a good sense of how good a player is before he gets brought up. So if a GM sees a great player in the minors, chances are he'll be great in the majors.

-Pitching baseball ROY- as mentioned earlier, based off of nothing mind you, I think the great pitchers who earn ROY get overworked and thus what got them ROY also causes injuries and being bad.

-Basketball ROY- Good players look better on bad teams. If a team has a high draft pick, that means high draft picks go on bad teams. This allows teams to not only draft around their high draft pick in later years but it also allows the high draft pick to "do what he does" and show off, thus making him look good. Plus, the NBA talent to choose from in the college level is pretty poor anyways and you might have the #4 pick and it be worthless to you. This makes the top draft picks destined to be great anyways. I think all these factors show why ROY tend to be pretty darn good.

-Defensive football ROY- Look at all those players, all those were high draft picks. I think that is just a testament to all the talent that is out there. But mainly, I think its because a a great defensive player can shine no mater how good or bad the team is around him. If you're a great DE that can get to the QB, then who cares if the rest of your team is bad, you're still able to get sacks and be great. Although LB rely heavily on their D-line, if you're a good athletic guy, then your line in front of you really doesn't matter as long you can make tackles. Because individuals can succeed despite their team and because great teams with low draft picks can still draft quality defensive players late in the first or whatever round, that is why defensive ROY tend to be a pretty good class

-Offensive football ROY- However, unlike defensive players, rookie offensive players rely heavily on the team around them. No matter how good of a QB you are, if you get drafted to shitty team with a shitty O-line, you're gonna be kind of shitty. Hell, look at Kevin Jones last year. This kid has amazing talent but you can't look good when you have that Detroit O-line in front of you. Because great talent that gets drafted high tend to go to shitty teams, I think you tend to see a below average group of offensive ROY.

But just because you win ROY, no matter what the trend seems to be, does not mean anything for your future. Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, LT, Ed Reed, Troy Polamalu, Kobe Bryant, Dewayne Wade, Dwight Howard, Grady Sizemore, Miguel Cabrera, and Jose Reyes have never won ROY are all among their games elite. Ozzie Guillen won ROY of the year and he's one of the worst offensive players in the HISTORY of baseball. At the other end of the spectrum, Michael Jordan, Shaq, Larry Bird, Cal Ripken Jr, Mike Piazza, Pete Rose, Barry Sanders, Emmitt Smith, and Lawrence Taylor all HAVE won ROY and all are some of the greatest in their sport. Obviously winning ROY doesn't mean you will be great and just because you didn't win it doesn't mean you can't be great.

So what does the future hold in store for Evan Longoria, Geovany Soto, Jerod Mayo, Matt Ryan, Kevin Durant, and Derrick Rose (cross your fingers)? Who knows. But I think it's interesting as hell to study the past to see what might occur.