In addition to MLB win totals, divisional odds, World Series odds, and player props, I also bet on player awards — including Most Value Player, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year — before any MLB season.
If you missed Part I, my team futures Mega Guide, or Part II, my player prop predictions, you can see the remainder of my futures card for the 2023 MLB season.
It’s worth noting that your risk profile for player awards should fall somewhere between the risk allocation for those two articles.
For example, I have placed 21 team futures for the 2023 season (World Series, divisional bets, or win total wagers) and have risked about 0.55 units per team future.
Conversely, I have provided 41 stat leaders bets over eight categories but only risked around 0.1 units per wager in those markets.
For my player awards bets below, I wagered 3.1 units across 27 wagers (0.12. units per awards future.)
Below, I’ll provide my projected leaderboards for all awards categories and tell you where I’m placing my money for 2022.
Rookie of the Year
In 2011, a pair of pitchers (Jeremy Hellickson and Craig Kimbrel) swept the Rookie of the Year honors for the first time in 30 years (Dave Righetti and Fernando Valenzuela in 1981).
However, 18 of the past 22 winners (82%) accumulated more playing time on offense (including Shohei Ohtani, 2018), so I lean toward position players in this market, all else being relatively equal.
Moreover, Wins Above Replacement, or “WAR” ranking, has become increasingly crucial to award voters in the past decade.'
Sixteen of the past 22 Rookie of the Year winners (73%) finished atop the rookies in their league in WAR, with an average rank of 1.5 among the 22 awards recipients. And that includes a pandemic-shortened 2019 season, where Devin Williams (sixth) and Kyle Lewis (second) claimed honors.
Here are my projected WAR leaders among rookies for the upcoming season, alongside their listed odds at FanDuel:
We might as well begin by discussing the biggest spring riser — Anthony Volpe (the No. 5 prospect per MLB Pipeline) — who I bet and entered into the Action App at +2500 on February 23rd. When I ran early projections, Volpe was the only player who stacked up with presumptive favorite Gunnar Henderson (No. 1 prospect) based on average WAR as a component of playing time.
In late February, I only had Volpe slated for 250 plate appearances but was willing to speculate on his talent level (represented by the matching average WAR projection). After a strong spring, I now project Volpe for closer to 560 plate appearances, with the opportunity for even more depending upon his lineup spot, health and performance.
For context, three different projection systems have updated their numbers since Volpe won a roster spot; all have him projected between 3.0 and 3.5 WAR.