After Setting The Baseball World On Fire In The 2020 Playoffs, Randy Arozarena Gets Named 2021 AL Rookie Of The Year
In the 2020 playoffs Randy Arozarena burst onto the scene for the Rays with his 10 homers for the Rays during their run to the World Series. He entered the season as the favorite for the AL Rookie Of The Year and guess what, he came home with it. He's the 4th Rays rookie to win the award and first since Will Meyers in 2013. Randy got 22 of the 30 first place votes for an easy victory over Luis Garcia of the Astros and his teammate with the Rays, Wander Franco.
It's wild that he was Rookie Of The Year because he was a legit star last October, he just didn't have the amount of at-bats to qualify. The same for the season before when he was in St. Louis, he played in 19 games for the Cardinals in 2019. So in his ROY season he had already played in the playoffs in 3 different seasons for 2 teams. Crazy. He gave us a 20-20 season right on the nose, had a 4.1 WAR, only had 1 error in the field, had 69 driven in, 32 doubles, 145 hits, hit .274, and had a .356 OBP. He also gave us one of the crazier highlights from the postseason this year as well.
Safe to say he and his family were pretty happy as well. Pretty awesome moment for Randy. I'm sure the Rays won't flip him in a few years in order to avoid paying him. He's an absolute stud and going to be a force for a long time, the entire class of rookies in the AL are going to be problems.
Jonathan India won it for the NL and it wasn't really close, he was by far the best rookie in the NL. If he played anywhere that wasn't Cincinnati there would be a ton of buzz around him.
He's a damn good player who flew under the radar for a lot of the season, expect to see him talked about a ton next season. 21 homers, a .269 average, 69 RBIs, a .376 OBP, 12 stolen bases, 57 extra base hits, the guy did it all. India beat out Marlins starter Trevor Rodgers and Cardinals outfielder Dylan Carlson. India didn't even make it close, he got 29 out of the 30 first place votes and ran away with it. He's going to be super fun to watch for the Reds next year in the leadoff spot, have to be happy for a guy like him to bring home the award.