The impediment to playing time has seemingly dissipated. But it’s not a foregone conclusion.
Drake Baldwin is having a pretty great time, even if his team isn’t. He has 2.2 fWAR in 229 PAs, and is one of a limited array of Braves who isn’t being tormented by something, especially since he’s not underhitting his xwOBA after accounting for the (maybe?) impending calibration. He’s hit really well, he’s framed at an above-average rate by multiple assessments, and the rest of his defensive game has been fine. He’s playing at a nearly 6 fWAR pace, He hits the ball hard while having enough bat control to translate more of his swing speed to exit velocity than a lo of his teammates, and doesn’t have to get himself into a potential chase situation to ambush pitches and handle strikes, so his approach is at least fairly resilient to whatever strategic finagling the Braves may continue to toy with. The fact that he’s a launch angle adjustment away from becoming an absolute monster offensively means there’s room to grow, though he’ll also have to adjust when pitchers stop challenging him given his obvious ability to crush stuff. (On the flip side, he’s not as aggressive as he could be on get-me-overs, so there’s room to grow there, too.)
Take this all in, and he leads NL rookies in fWAR… right now, even though he spent much of the season in a timeshare. Well, timeshare no longer — the dual-catcher lineup action is a standard now, given Marcell Ozuna’s de facto relegation to the bench.
There are two things that could derail Baldwin’s bid for the rookie fWAR lead by season’s end at this point. The first is, well, DH carries a pretty sizable penalty. I’ll spare you the math on a Tuesday morning, but basically, hitting for a league-average line as a DH yields roughly zero fWAR. Hitting for a league-average line as a catcher, without any special defensive contribution as a catcher, yields roughly 2 WAR/season. (These numbers are very rough.) Since Baldwin won’t be catching the lion’s share and pushing Sean Murphy purely into the DH spot, he’s going to eat that DH penalty. Splitting time between essentially 2 WAR/season as a DH and 6 WAR/season as a catcher is a lot less helpful to WAR accumulation than just doing the latter. But it’s better than not playing.
The second is, more obviously, all the other players vying for the award. For whatever reason, all these guys are from the Brewers. Chad Patrick is behind Baldwin with 2.0 fWAR, but he’s pitched like an average, shorter-stint starter whose value has benefited mightily from a low HR/FB. He also got optioned to Triple-A and hasn’t yet been recalled. For a long time, he was the clear second place guy behind Baldwin. But, he’s been surpassed by teammate Isaac Collins, who is massively outhitting his xwOBA, walking a ton, and playing great outfield defense en route to 2.1 fWAR. And, Jacob Misiorowski is lurking as a guy that could get a narrative boost in voting and has the potential to add a ton of fWAR every start, though he only has 0.5 right now and is probably going to be subject to innings limits down the stretch.
From a voting perspective, this trio of Brewers may split some high-up votes, but they’re also somewhat more compelling in terms of helping an unlikely-but-maybe-it-was-never-unlikely-and-we-should-stop-constantly-discounting-them contender vie for a division title, than anything surrounding a depressingly moribund Braves season. But I also find voters fairly nonsensical, so I’m more just hoping Baldwin stays strong to close out the year and racks up a bunch more fWAR and that proves sufficient, rather than hoping that voters hand out their votes properly.
Anyway, what do you think? Maybe you could talk about it in terms of odds, if nothing else.