Tracking Awards 4/30

AL MVP: Mike Trout (LAA): 7 HR, 18 RBI, .365 AVG, 5 SB, 223 wRC+. Last week: Trout.

What else is new? Early on, Mike Trout is right there atop the American League. He is slashing .365/.436/.719 through 27 games, leading the AL in games played, hits (35), extra base hits (18), total bases (69), wRC+ (223), wOBA (weighted on-base average, .474), and fWAR (2.0). He's sitting on a 13 game hitting streak right now, and in all but one of them he's had at least two total bases. He also hasn't struck out more than once in any of those games. He's only just started his seventh season, but he's working his way up the list of the all time greatest players.

NL MVP: Ryan Zimmerman (WSH): 11 HR, 27 RBI, .410 AVG, 1 SB, 246 wRC+. Last week: Bryce Harper.

Through just 23 games, Ryan Zimmerman has nearly half as many total bases (74) as he did in all of 2016 (158). Just one season after slashing .218/.272/.370 and putting up a 67 wRC+, which would have been the third worst in the MLB had he qualified, he is off to a .410/.456/.892 start, putting up a major league leading 246 wRC+. What has gotten into this guy? The answer is in the launch angle. In 2016, he had elite exit velocity, averaging 93.3 MPH, while this season is virtually the same at 93.2 MPH. However, last year, the ball only travelled 166 feet on average, while this season he's averaging 219 feet per batted ball, because he's not pounding the ball into the ground any more. Contrary to popular belief, the secret to hitting is in going for fly balls, not ground balls. Zimmerman has been hot all season, but he has really gone to another level over his last eleven games, slashing a whopping .488/.533/1.146 with eight home runs in that span. With Adam Eaton out for the season with an ACL injury, it is critical that Zim keeps producing the way he is.

AL Cy Young: Ervin Santana (MIN): 4-0, 0.77 ERA, 0.66 WHIP, 26/10 K/BB. Last week: Santana.

Ervin Santana is still going at it. Through five starts, he's allowed just three runs on thirteen hits and ten walks over 35 innings, good for an MLB best 0.77 ERA and 0.66 WHIP. In no single start has he allowed more than one run, four hits, or three walks, with his "worst" start of the season coming on April 20th against Cleveland, where he went six innings and allowed just one run on four hits and three walks, striking out five. His best start was just five days earlier, when he shut out the White Sox on one hit, one walk, and eight strikeouts over nine innings. We don't know what has gotten into Ervin, but its working.

NL Cy Young: Ivan Nova (PIT): 3-2, 1.50 ERA, 0.75 WHIP, 22/1 K/BB. Last week: Noah Syndergaard.

Ivan Nova may have had an unspectacular start on April 12th, when he allowed three runs on eight hits and no walks over six innings against the Reds, but aside from that one game, he's simply been spectacular. In his four other starts, he is 3-1 with a 0.90 ERA and a 0.63 WHIP, striking out 21 and walking just one over 30 innings. In his most recent start, on Saturday, he shut out the Marlins on three hits and no walks, striking out seven in nine innings. As of now, Yankees pitcher Jordan Montgomery is the only player to draw a walk against Nova.

AL Rookie of the Year: Aaron Judge (NYY): 10 HR, 20 RBI, .301 AVG, 1 SB, 217 wRC+. Last week: Mitch Haniger.

Coming into the season, we were worried that Judge wouldn't make enough contact in the bigs to get to his huge power. He struck out in 23.9% of his plate appearances in AAA in 2016, then a whopping 44.2% of his plate appearances in 27 major league games. According to Fangraphs, he swung at 33.6% of pitches out of the zone, and even on pitches in the zone, he made contact only 78.9% of the time. However, 2017 is a different story. He has dropped his strikeout rate to 26.2% by swinging at just 24.1% of pitches out of the zone and making contact 86.5% of the time in the zone. This has led to some huge offensive numbers, as he is slashing .301/.393/.767 (217 wRC+) over 21 games, mashing 10 home runs. His average exit velocity of 94.5 MPH ranks sixth in the MLB, and his 119.4 MPH home run off of Kevin Gausman on Friday was the hardest-hit home run in Statcast history (since 2015). Aaron Judge was looked at very much as a boom-or-bust prospect coming up, and while the jury is still out, he's looking like a boom right now.

NL Rookie of the Year: Antonio Senzatela (CIN): 3-1, 2.81 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 18/7 K/BB. Last week: Senzatela

Update on Senzatela: one week later, still nobody has told him that pitching in Coors Field is supposed to be difficult. Despite making three of his five starts so far in pitchers' hell, he has a 2.81 ERA and a 1.00 WHIP, walking just seven guys in 32 innings. Over three starts at Coors, he has a very respectable 3.15 ERA and 1.00 WHIP, by any stadium's standards, and in his two road starts, his ERA and WHIP are 2.25 and 1.00, respectively. He made just seven starts above High Class A coming into the season, but the 22 year old has taken the majors by storm.

Minor League Watch: Domenic Mazza (SF Class A): 1-2, 3.48 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, 17/4 K/BB. Last week: Tyler Mahle.

Another week, another perfect game in the minor leagues. This one comes from Giants prospect Domenic Mazza, a 22 year old right hander with the Class A Augusta GreenJackets. Mazza was a 22nd round pick out of UC Santa Barbara in 2015, but he has worked his way into the mid-minors now. His first start of the season was ugly, as he allowed seven runs on seven hits and a walk over 2.2 innings, striking out one. He improved in his second start, allowing one run on eight hits and one walk over four innings, striking out two. He was even better in his third start, tossing five shutout innings on three hits and two walks, striking out four. Then, on April 25th, he toed the rubber against a strong Lexington Legends offense including highly regarded Royals' prospects such as Khalil Lee (a Northern Virginia kid out of Flint Hill), Chris DeVito, and Kort Peterson. 27 batters later, he had a perfect game, striking out eight Legends (including Lee all three times and DeVito twice) without allowing a single batter to reach base. In his three starts since the seven run meltdown in Columbia, he has a 0.50 ERA and a 0.78 WHIP, striking out 15 in 18 innings while walking just three.