Gunnar Henderson's Career Start Compared to Cal Ripken Jr's

[btdart20]

12 minutes ago, Mooreisbetter27 said:

How would someone look up the Orioles rookie record for triples?  Gunnar is at 9.  

Bumbry had 11 triples in 1973 in his ROY season.  Not sure if that's the record or not though.

[Mooreisbetter27]

33 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

Bumbry had 11 triples in 1973 in his ROY season.  Not sure if that's the record or not though.

Thanks!  I haven't found a way to look up just rookie numbers, so appreciate you responding with this.  

[Frobby]

On 7/21/2023 at 4:06 AM, Yossarian said:

Julio Rodriguez is 22 and has a career WAR of 8.5 already. I would say he's up there, too.

Jackson Holliday is 19 and was born in a manger.  

[Just Regular]

I thought OPACY smothered all triples!

With Gunnar mostly settling at SS, it looks like he is going to have to wait until 2024 for B-Ref to count him as a starting position player for the "2023 Orioles".

He lags Urias 68-64 in 3B starts and Mateo 90-57 in SS starts.    I believe the B-Ref algortihm just reports the Games Started leader as the primary.

He might get a way in through "DH", which I think today is giving O'Hearn the nod even though they are in an 11-11 tie as the highest unallocated Starting Nine.

Cal Ripken never would have failed at leading the team at his position!

[Billy F-Face3]

As announced by the Iron Man Cal Ripken Jr himself, Gunnar Henderson is now officially the AL Rookie of the Year!

https://www.mlb.com/news/gunnar-henderson-corbin-carroll-rare-rookie-of-the-year-company?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

I think this thread, which was created in May, will continue to be used to track Gunnar's career progress.

[Frobby]

I’d say Gunnar had a better rookie year than Cal did.  He’ll be hard pressed to match Cal’s sophomore season.  

[Pickles]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I’d say Gunnar had a better rookie year than Cal did.  He’ll be hard pressed to match Cal’s sophomore season.  

The scroll said he had the highest WAR for an Oriole rookie since coming to Baltimore in 1954, which surprised me.  He also had the 4th highest WAR for a rookie SS in MLB history, I"m assuming.  That's pretty rarified air.

[Frobby]

4 minutes ago, Pickles said:

The scroll said he had the highest WAR for an Oriole rookie since coming to Baltimore in 1954, which surprised me.  

True if you’re going by rWAR.  By fWAR, Gunnar didn’t even have the highest rookie total of the last two years!  (Adley 5.1, Gunnar 4.6.)

Edited November 14, 2023 by Frobby

[Pickles]

Just now, Frobby said:

True if you’re going by rWAR.  By fWAR, Gunnar didn’t even have the highest rookie total of the last two years!  (Adley 5.1, Gunnar 4.6.)

Good point.  I was truly surprised to see that he had the highest total since the franchise's arrival.  

It's really exciting to think how good this team can be as long as those two are on the roster.

[OriolesMagic83]

On 9/19/2023 at 8:24 AM, Frobby said:

Jackson Holliday is 19 and was born in a manger.  

Jackson said "only 8.5, was that a down year?"

[UMDTerrapins]

If we’re spotting parallels, the most important one is Cal won a WS in his second full season. Let’s just assume Gunnar does the same. 

Edited November 14, 2023 by UMDTerrapins

[InsideCoroner]

Ultimately the biggest difference I see is that we had Cal for 20 seasons, and we might only have Gunnar for 6.  

Maybe whenever Gunnar or Adley come to the plate fans should start chanting, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”

[btdart20]

3 hours ago, InsideCoroner said:

Ultimately the biggest difference I see is that we had Cal for 20 seasons, and we might only have Gunnar for 6.  

Maybe whenever Gunnar or Adley come to the plate fans should start chanting, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”

Should we be comparing him to Manny instead then?

[e16bball]

Cool date for the original post. Gunnar was hitting .199 on May 29, and his OPS was teetering on the very brink of starting with a “6.” From that date, the average and the OPS were never that low again. 

May 29 wasn’t exactly the low point of his season (that probably came about 3 weeks earlier), but he was in the midst of a 10-day mini-slump and the citizens were definitely getting restless. On May 30, the day after this post, Gunnar went 2/4 with a double and 3 RBIs, and he never looked back. His next 10 days? A cool .432/.462/.892/1.354 slash line.

This was basically the “Phillies giving Trea Turner a standing ovation” moment of our 2023 season. I see no evidence to prove that Gunnar didn’t log on to the OH on the morning of May 30, read this post, realize he was squarely on the Cal Ripken path, and go out that night against Cleveland feeling inspired and emboldened.

[Frobby]

Cal is looking a bit like the Pillsbury dough boy these days.