Brian O’Neill

QUICK BERNIE COLUMN About the JJ Wetherholt v Sal Stewart NL Rookie of the Year "debate," obviously JJ is the vastly superior defender and baserunner. No rational person would try to push back on that opinion. Offensively, one guy plays home games in a hitter-haven ballpark, and the other guy plays home games in a hitter-suppressing ballpark. So I think the fair thing to do here is look at this: how do each of these batters perform this season when hitting in ballparks other than their own? -- Batting average: Wetherholt, .266 Stewart .255 -- Onbase%: Wetherholt .394, Stewart .311 -- Slugging%: Stewart .450, Wetherholt .440. -- OPS: Wetherholt .834, Stewart .762 -- wRC+: Wetherholt 36% above league average offensively, Stewart 4% above league average. -- Homers: Stewart 12, Wetherholt 9 -- Extra-base hits: Stewart 21 and JJ 18 -- Times on base: Wetherholt 99, Stewart 80 Now our good friends, the Reds fans, will shout: RBIs! Fine. Let's talk about RBIs. Wetherholt hits No. 1 in the lineup and doesn't have as many RBI opportunities as Stewart. Stewart does have 79 PA as the No. 2 hitter in his away games this season but 151 PA have come in the 3-4-5 spots. So yes, Stewart has 46 RBIs in games played away from Cincinnati. Wetherholt has 28 RBIs in games away from St. Louis. Is that a big difference? No. Here's why: In games away from their home ballparks: Men on base: Stewart: 119 plate appearances, Wetherholt with 80 ... Stewart has had 39 more PA than JJ with runners on base. Runners in scoring position: Stewart 77 plate appearances; JJ with 46 ... Stewart with 31 more PA than Wetherholt in RISP scenarios. Seeing that, it's understandable why Stewart would have the higher RBI count ... Just as it's understandable to see Wetherholt with the higher runs-scored total (43) than Stewart (29) in games away from their home yards. Wetherholt bats leadoff and has more speed, so naturally we'd expect him to score more runs than Stewart. And I wouldn't hold that against Stewart. Stewart's RBI production is more about opportunities than performance. In games played away from each hitter's home field, what about batting average and OPS with runners in scoring position? What about batting average + OPS with men on base? Hint: Wetherholt is exceptional in these tests. WITH RISP Wetherholt .368 average, 1.005 OPS Stewart .254 average, .823 OPS WITH MEN ON BASE Wetherholt .343 average, .972 OPS Stewart .243 average, .745 OPS I hope this helps. Please pardon my typos. (This was a sample of what you can expect -- and a lot more including significant interaction -- when I move my columns to a subscriber platform. Coming next week.) Thanks for reading ! --Bernie