Dwight Gooden Award, 2022

[Edgy MD]

I thought that one of the (several) sweet things about Mazeika's homerun was that the Mets hadn't hadn't had a substantive contribution by a rookie yet this season. Plummers, Nogoseks, and Medinas have appeared, but none of them has actually moved the needle, earned any fWAR, any bWAR, any WPA+. As soon as Zeke's homer had landed, I thought that he had broken that streak. But no, after checking this morning, it seems that Patrick used up his rookie eligibility in 2021.



Surely Nogosek has made an impact at the more granular Schaefer level, and somebody is going to come along by September and contribute, but great seasons need rookie contributors as part of the story, and I've been starting to worry that that this season's Dwight Gooden Award Ceremony, held early every December inside my head, is going to be a pretty damp affair.