What are the odds that Shohei Ohtani will win the Rookie of the Year

The Angels may have had a tough season as a team, but some individual players, most notably Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout had stellar seasons and both are up for major awards from the MLB.

It was announced Sunday that Shohei Ohtani was one of the three finalists for the AL Rookie of the Year Award.  Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres of the New York Yankees are the other two finalist for the award that honors the best rookie over the past season.

The Angels have had two rookie of the year award winners in club history as outfielder Tim Salmon won the award in 1993 when the team was still the California Angels. Then Mike Trout walked away with the award in 2012.

Ohtani is very unique because not only is he a good hitter, but a very good pitcher as well.  The feat of being a pitcher and a hitter in the same season was last done close to 100 years ago when Babe Ruth did it for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.

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Ohtani played designated hitter and also was a starting pitcher for the first half of the 2018 season before suffering a torn UCL in his elbow.  Ohtani went 4-2 with a 3.31 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP.  He stuck out 63 batters in 51.2 innings of work and struck out more than 10 batters three times in 10 starts.

On the hitting side Ohtani hit .285 with 22 homers and drove in 61 runs with 10 stolen bases. He had three multiple homer games.  He also had two game-winning homers including one against So. Cal. rivals the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Ohtani kept on playing despite his injury he stayed in the line-up as a DH for the Angels.

Although Ohtani’s hitting stats do not compare to Andujar’s stats of a .297 average with 27 homers and 92 RBIs, Andujar had close to 300 more at-bats than Ohtani.  In addition he did pitch like Ohtani did.  Torres also had good hitting stats as well hitting .271 with 24 homers and 77 RBIs, but they were comparable to Ohtani’s numbers.

Ohtani already received the Baseball Digest Rookie of the Year Award.  Hopefully the Baseball Writers Association will see things the same way as the Baseball Digest.  Ohtani is really deserving of the award.  We will see soon when thee announcement comes out in the next couple of days.