Carson Benge Was ROBBED...

Last night, Sal Stewart won National League Rookie of the Year, and Carson Benge finished second. It wasn't close on the ballot. Stewart got 20 of the 31st placed votes, and Benge got 7. The final count was 170 points to 107. Now, put a different number next to that vote. By baseball reference wins above replacement, Benge was worth four wins this season, and Stewart was worth less than two. That's more than double the value from the guy who finished 63 points back. Finishing second cost the Mets a trophy too. So how does the better player lose a vote by that much? And did 30 voters just get it wrong? It starts and stops with the same stat line that every single voter, every single fan saw first, and that is that Stewart hit 32 home runs and drove in 112 runs as a rookie, playing all 162 games for the Cincinnati Reds. Only 14 rookies in history have hit 30 home runs and driven in 100, and the previous nine to do it all won Rookie of the Year. The last one before Stewart was a Met. Pete Alonso, in 2019, Stewart also stole 15 bases, which made him only the second rookie ever with 30 homers and 15 steals after Jose Canseco. All that power added up to 285 total bases, 29 more than Benge, and that's the kind of number a box score shows you every night. Now voters know that list, and the betting market knew it too, but that's not everything there is to look at. In late October, DraftKings had Stewart at minus 525 to win the award, with Benge next at plus 450. Now, each voter ranks five rookies, and a first place vote is worth seven points. So a pile of the first place votes builds a gap fast. Stewart was on all 30 ballots. Now, look, the home runs and the RBIs, they're impressive. They're definitely valuable and real, and nobody should pretend that they aren't. But the fact is, is that they're only half of a stat sheet. And Carson Benge took home basically everything on the other half. Yeah, so. There's a lot more to consider here. When you look at just getting on base, because we'll start there. Benge hit 282 this season, 19 points higher than Stewart's 263. His on-base percentage was 346 against 330 for Stewart. Those hits weren't bloopers either. His average exit velocity of 90.3 miles an hour sat in the 71st percentile of qualified hitters. That's the part of hitting that never makes the highlight package, but it's oh so important because it sets up the guys behind you in the lineup. And once Benj was on, he ran. He stole 22 bases to Stewart's 15. Weigh every hit for what it's worth and adjust for the ballpark, which is what Fangraph's WRC Plus does, and Benge comes out at 118 to Stewart's 112. That park adjustment matters. Because Stewart plays half his games in Great American Ballpark, one of the easiest places in baseball to hit a home run, and Benge plays his at Citi Field, a predominantly pitcher-friendly park. And then, there's the glove. Benge played 134 games in right field and made four errors there. Fangraphs has him 9.7 runs above average in the field, while Stewart was right around average at 0.1 below. He also threw runners out at home plate on back-to-back plays, something no Mets outfielder had done before. Line the two of them up and Stewart takes the home runs and the RBIs, while Benj takes the average, the on-base percentage, And the wins above replacement. It isn't one website either. FanGraphs lands in the same place, with Benj 2.3 wins ahead of Stewart. The one number where it's close is OPS, with Stewart at .787 and Benj at .776. Stewart's power is real. His barrel rate was in the 95th percentile of qualified hitters. But a gap of .011 in OPS next to a gap of 2.5 wins is not a close season. Benj built that season, after the worst start of the three finalists. Benj almost didn't even start the year with the Major League team in New York at all. In fact, even in camp, David Stearns wouldn't commit to him for the opening day roster. Then, on March 25th, the Mets selected his contract, with Mike Tauchman's knee injury helping open the spot in right field. Not even four weeks into the season, it looked like a huge mistake. On April 20th, Benj was hitting a ridiculously bad .143 through 19 games. The bat was simply a black hole, according to Mets on Sports Illustrated. He'd torn up AA in 2025 with a .978 OPS. At AAA that same season, it fell to .583 over 103 plate appearances, and the calls to send him back down got very, very loud. This was the 19th pick of the 2024 draft out of Oklahoma State, and the doubts were loud before May. David Stearns wouldn't even discuss a demotion. The Mets kept writing Benj's name in the lineup every day, and in May, it turned around for him. On May 13th, he won a game with an RBI in the 10th inning, and on June 7th, he had five hits with a home run and a triple. From May 1st on, Benj hit .299 and got on base at a .363 clip. 18 of his 20 home runs came after that date. In August, manager Andy Green challenged him to make something happen against a tough right-hander. So, he homered and told Green on his way out to right field, I did something. Both rookies were hot that month. Stewart hit 8 home runs in August with an .879 OPS, and Bench was right there with an .882. Then the line split, with Bench at an .873 in September, and Stewart at .567. Stewart hit 1 home run that whole month. Bench's September wRC+ was 147, which means he was 47% better than a league average hitter in the last month of the race. Ballots go in when the regular season ends, so voters saw this final month where the front runner completely collapsed and the runner-up continued to ascend and still went with the guy who had a better first half. And keep in mind, Benj did all of this while the team around him completely fell apart this season. The Mets opened the season with a record $358 million payroll. They finished 74-88. Their worst record since 2017. When a team is out of the playoff race by June, which the Mets were, nobody outside of New York is going to stay up late to watch their rookie right fielder. But Benj, for the entire season, kept playing like the games meant something. On September 19th against the Phillies, he got his 156th hit of the season and passed Pete Alonso for the Mets rookie record. He finished the year with 168 of them. He had 10 assists from right field too. When Juan Soto was asked about the Mets future, his answer was two words, Carson Bench. Carson Bench even said himself that he was thinking of a case to be named even before the finalists were announced, which is totally justified. He said, I think I deserve it, he told the New York Post. He said he'd shown it in, quote, all facets of the game. He also said he didn't mean to come off cocky. The voters didn't buy it, though, but some of his numbers are frankly ones that no Mets rookie had ever put up. For starters, no rookie in Mets history had ever hit 20 home runs and stolen 20 bases in the same season before Bench. No, not even Daryl Strawberry. When he got to 15-15 in August, the last Mets rookie to get there before him was Daryl Strawberry in 1983. Strawberry won Rookie of the Year that season. The Mets have had six rookies of the year in their history. Tom Terrific, Tom Seaver, John Matlack, Daryl Strawberry, Doc, Dwight Gooden, Jacob deGrom, and Pete Alonso. Pretty incredible company. Benj joins a shorter list, though. The Mets who finished behind a legend. Ron Hunt finished behind Pete Rose in 1963, and Jerry Koosman behind Johnny Bench in 1968. Rose became baseball's all-time hit leader, and Bench is a Hall of Fame catcher who, by many accounts, is the greatest catcher of all time. Now, Carson Bench wasn't the only Mets rookie on the list either. Nolan McLean finished fourth with 70 points, so two of the top four rookies in the National League play in Queens. Bench showed up on 28 of the 30 ballots. 12 of those voters had him third, the most third-placed votes of anyone. The rookie who finished third, J.J. Weatherholt of the Cardinals, hit .242 with a .704 OPS. His case was the glove, 25 outs above average, the second most in baseball. His bat faded late, with his WRC plus falling from 114 in the first half to 76 in the second. Bench finished ahead with the defensive value and behind in home runs, and that tells you everything you need to know about how this vote went down. Now, guys, if you are enjoying the content today and you want more of it every single day about everything you need to know about the New York Mets. Please do hit subscribe. We're currently at 8,178 subscribers, and we're trying to hit 9,000 by the middle of next month. So every new subscriber helps this channel grow. Now, the Mets had more riding on this vote than simply just bragging rights. In fact, under the prospect promotion incentive, a team that gives a top prospect a full year of service. Gets an extra draft pick if he wins Rookie of the Year. So Bench was in right field on opening day and played 156 games. So the trophy was the only box left. Win it, and the Mets add a pick at the end of the first round of next summer's draft. Finish second, and they get nothing. For a team coming off 88 losses, a free first round pick is exactly the kind of help that doesn't cost payroll. After the All-Star break, Bench had an 844 OPS to Stewart's 753. So was it a robbery? The call? The better rookie season was Carson Bench's, and it wasn't particularly close. The reason is... He had 4.3 wins above replacement to Sal Stewart's 1.8, plus the on-base, the legs, and the glove. The doubt? Sal Stewart had a great season, too, to his credit. 32 home runs, 112 runs batted in, a 9-for-9 club, OPS was extremely close within .11. But unfortunately for the Mets, this cost them a first-round pick that they now don't get. And what to watch is in year two, because there's no ballot needed to settle it then. We will know for sure who the better player is with more of a sample size. Now, Benj doesn't get the trophy here. But the Mets got the better rookie season from the 23-year-old they refused to give up on in April. And I cannot emphasize enough how slow of a start Benj got and how loud the calls were for him to get demoted. And credit David Stearns and the Mets organization for one thing, they stuck with their rookie. Next year, Benj walks into spring training with a full big league season behind him and nobody asking about him starting in AAA. So who should have won? Carson Bench or Sal Stewart? You guys tell me in the comments. Stewart now has the hardware, and Benj has a 2027 to make this vote look even worse.