I can. I thought he was going take a little longer to figure it out. Once he starts lifting the ball, his numbers will be sick. He has a faster bat than Cal Raleigh.
There are guys that blew through the minors or skipped the minors before Cam - about half of them were stars and half of those Hall of Famers. some names I can think of are Larry Dierker, Willie Mays, Dwight Gooden, Juan Soto, Bryce Harper, Ken Griffey Jr, Bob Feller, David Clyde, Ryan Wagner, Pete Incaviglia… they either had almost no minor league time or were up at like 19-20 years old. Albert Pujols was another one. Mike Trout was pretty quick too. Garett Crochet…Dave Winfield, Olerud and Darren Dreifort too.
Cam has put himself into the ROY race. I think there are 3 clear rookies who are, head and shoulders, above the others with a couple who are close enough that a big week could raise them into that group. I see no pitchers who are in the race at this point. Wilson is still the clear leader. Because of media and legacy/name he will need to be knocked off the hill. He has lost steam after a scorching start, though. Narvaez of Boston and Cam are the others in striking distance. Dominguez of the Yankees and Kurtz of the A's round out the top 5 in my ROY power rankings on July 4th. R: Wilson 42, Dominguez 37, Cam 34, Narvaez 34, Williamson 31 RBI: Wilson 40, Cam 38, Kurtz 32, Dominguez 30, Narvaez 28 HR: Kurtz 12, Wilson 9, Cam 7, Narvaez 7, Muncy 7 SB: Simpson 23, Dominguez 13, Magnum 11, Meidroth 11, Mister 8. 200+ PAs AVG: Wilson. 339, Cam .291, Narvaez .277, Dominguez .267, Williamson .259 OB%: Wilson .380, Cam .359, Narvaez .354, Meidroth. 346, Dominguez .345 SLG: (Kurtz .489 in 196 PAs), Wilson .463, Narvaez .446, Cam .445, Dominguez .407, Misner. 345 OPS: Wilson .853, Cam .804, Narvaez .801, (Kurtz .800), Dominguez. 753, Campbell .664 wRC+: Wilson 138, Cam 129, Narvaez 121, (Kurtz 116), Dominguez 114, Meidroth 90. OPS+: Wilson 138, Cam 125, Narvaez 122, (Kurtz 120), Dominguez 112, Meidroth 86. fWAR: Wilson 2.9, Narvaez 2.6, Cam 1.9, Magnum 1.1, Dominguez 1.0, Meidroth 1.0 bWAR: Narvaez 2.6, Cam 2.5, Wilson 2.1, Dominguez 1.1, Mangum 1.0.
Cam will have to continue to ascend and Wilson will have to go into a major slump to have a chance. There is also still a great deal of media bias against the Astros. The eventual Las Vegas Athletics will be a major media darling for a while leading up to the move.
Like Cam, these guys all went to college first and played 3 or 4 years. More common for a college phenom to skip the minors than a HS grad. (Captain obvious moment, sorry)
Cam's BABIP is currently at an unsustainable .392, so I was curious as to some of the supporting data. His expected OBA and BA are only slightly below his actual numbers, even with that huge BABIP. 248 qualified hitters according to statcast. He ranks 9th in LD%....and 235th in Pop up ratio (usually auto outs). He has put the ball in play 178 times and has a measly 5 pop ups. His walk and K rates have come down the last 100 PA, so I think he has just been attacking hittable pitches earlier. His expected (and real) numbers over that stretch are superstar level. So while his BABIP suggest some luck in regards to his overall season numbers, there's a lot of underlying data that still suggests he's already a great hitter, and that he's adjusting to the league a lot better than the league is adjusting to him.
We have real-time data on this - no need to guess. https://kalshi.com/markets/kxmlbalroty/pro-baseball-american-league-rookie-of-the-year A week ago, Wilson had a 90% chance to win ROY and Cam was around 3%. (Kurtz was 6%ish). Today, Wilson is at a bit over 50% and Cam is around 30%.
Cam's profile coming into the season was a low launch angle that was limiting his power potential... he hits it very hard at a low angle. That's going to result in fewer pop ups, because he's getting under the ball less, and also result in a higher BABIP. So I think having an above-average BABIP is sustainable. He's a star.
