Trout, Harper top MLB rookies

NEW YORK (AP) — Mike Trout and Bryce Harper were team­mates on the Scotts­dale Scor­pi­ons last fall. The out­field­ers arrived in the major leagues on the same April day this year, both played in the All-Star game and they won Rookie of the Year awards a half-hour apart Mon­day, the van­guard of baseball’s next generation.

The 21-year-old Trout was a unan­i­mous pick as the youngest AL rookie win­ner, and the 20-year-old Harper edged Ari­zona pitcher Wade Miley 112 points to 105 to become the second-youngest win­ner of the NL honor.

“It’s pretty neat,” said Trout, the son of for­mer Min­nesota minor lea­guer Jeff Trout.

For the first time, play­ers learned the vot­ing results when they were announced on television.

“My heart was beat­ing a lit­tle bit,” Harper said.

Trout, who turned 21 on Aug. 7, received all 28 first-place votes from the AL panel of the Base­ball Writ­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica. The Los Ange­les Angels cen­ter fielder was the eighth unan­i­mous AL pick and the first since Tampa Bay’s Evan Lon­go­ria in 2008.

There could be more to come, too. Trout is among five final­ists for AL MVP and is con­sid­ered the chief chal­lenger to Triple Crown win­ner Miguel Cabr­era for that award, which will be announced Thursday.

“It would just top it off,” Trout said.

Trout hit .326, second-best in the league to Cabrera’s .330, with 30 homers and 83 RBIs, and he led the majors with 129 runs and 49 steals. He joined Ted Williams, Mel Ott and Alex Rodriguez as the only play­ers to hit .320 or higher with 30 or more homers in sea­sons they started as a 20-year-old.

Trout received the max­i­mum 140 points. Oak­land out­fielder Yoe­nis Ces­pedes was sec­ond with 63, fol­lowed by Texas pitcher Yu Darvish (46), who joined Trout as the only play­ers listed on every ballot.

Detroit sec­ond­base­man Lou Whitaker had been the youngest AL win­ner in 1978, but he was 3 months, 5 days older than Trout on the day he took home the award.

In addi­tion to Trout and Lon­go­ria, the only other unan­i­mous AL win­ners were Nomar Gar­ci­a­parra, Derek Jeter, Tim Salmon, Sandy Alo­mar Jr., Mark McG­wire and Carl­ton Fisk.

Trout’s father made it to Double-A as an infielder with the Twins in the mid-1980s and watched his son build a career grow­ing up in New Jer­sey, where the sea­sons are short and cold.

“He went out and did it and endured it,” Jeff Trout said.

Added mom Deb­bie: “All the hard work paid off.”

Trout, taken by the Angels with the 25th over­all pick in the 2009 ama­teur draft, still lives at home with his par­ents dur­ing the off­sea­son. The award will join oth­ers in the fam­ily house.

“He gets a lot of good home cook­ing,” Jeff Trout said.

Trout spent some time in the majors last year but still retained his rookie sta­tus. He began this sea­son in the minors and made his first big league appear­ance this year on April 28 — the day of Harper’s major league debut.

Trout was on a flight from Salt Lake City to Cleve­land when he saw on Twit­ter that Harper was being called up the same day.

Harper turned 20 on Oct. 16 and has been hyped for years. When he was just 16, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illus­trated with the head­line “CHOSEN ONE.”

“He’s been put on the spot­light since he was 15 years old,” Trout said.

The Wash­ing­ton Nation­als out­fielder got 16 of 32 first-place votes from the NL panel. Miley was sec­ond with 12 first-place votes, fol­lowed by Cincin­nati slug­ger Todd Fra­zier with three firsts and 45 points. Harper appeared on every bal­lot, and Bill Cen­ter of U-T San Diego was the only voter who didn’t include Miley.

Harper was the top pick in the 2010 ama­teur draft and bat­ted .270 with 22 home runs and 59 RBIs as Wash­ing­ton brought post­sea­son play to the nation’s cap­i­tal for the first time since 1933. Only Tony Conigliaro (24) hit more home runs as a teenager.

“Every lit­tle kid’s dream is to be a big league ballplayer or a doc­tor or a fire­fighter or what­ever every­body wants to be,” Harper said. “That was my dream and I wanted to make that dream come true as quickly as possible.”

At 20 years, 27 days on Mon­day, he was 24 days older than New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden when he won the NL award in 1984.

“This game is unbe­liev­able. I love it with every­thing I’ve got,” Harper said, “and I’m going to play every sin­gle day like it’s my last.”

And the admi­ra­tion of Harper and Trout is mutual, espe­cially after their time together last year with Scotts­dale in the Ari­zona Fall League, for the game’s pre­mier prospects.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Nov 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.