Does the Rookie of the Year award guarantee a future pay raise? Yes!
ByWinning the Rookie of the Year award does not translate into a Cooperstown plaque at the end of your career. For every Willie McCovey, Cal Ripken Jr. and Johnny Bench that wins the Rookie of the Year, we also get a fair share of one hit wonders such as Bob Hamelin and Pat Listach. I respect the award and give credit to each winner since they have a tough job. These are usually kids in their late teens or early twenties who have perform on the biggest every day of a lengthy baseball season – one that they are not usually accustomed with. I congratulate Oakland’s Andrew Bailey and Florida’s Chris Coghlan for an outstanding 2009 rookie season.
I want to take a look at a few RoY winners of the past few years and see who managed to parlay their strong rookie campaign with a sizable contract.
| Year | Player, Team | Salary when winning RoY. | Next significant contract | Status |
| 1998 | Ben Grieve, Athletics | $172,000 | 4 year, $13M starting 2000 | Struggled to carry the Rays then out of baseball |
| 2001 | Albert Pujols, Cardinals | $200,000 | 7 year, $100M starting 2004 | Hello Cooperstown? Get the plaque ready! |
| 2003 | Dontrelle Willis, Marlins | $300,000 | 1 year, $4.35M starting 2006 | Hang it up |
| 2005 | Ryan Howard, Phillies | $316,000 | 1 year, $10M starting 2008 (arbitration won) | He has Hall potential if he can reduce the K’s |
Being Rookie of the Year will almost guarantee the winner a future contract that will take care of them for the rest of their life. I struggled to find a player that bombed out of the league immediately. Pat Listach, 1992 AL Rookie of the Year winner for the Milwaukee Brewers, left baseball in 1997 after playing 6 seasons which included a deal that paid him $2.2 million in 1996. Bob Hamelin, 1994 AL Rookie of the Year winner for Kansas City Royals, played in 4 seasons. His largest yearly paycheck was $450,000 in 1998 in his last year of his career with the Brewers. Hopefully Bailey and Coghlan can continue their success, blow their stats out of the water, leverage those stats against arbitration or sign a very lucrative and long-term deal.
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