If you watched baseball this year, or even paid attention to it, you probably knew at some point that this rookie class was something special. The emergence of so many young and talented players captivated the mainstream baseball media numerous times. The first stud to reach the big leagues was probably Kris Bryant, who had his picturesque swing and awesome power. Then, there was Carlos Correa, who showed an unbelievable ability to thrive at the plate while playing a quality shortstop.

It’s highly probable that a rookie had an impact on the way that you watched the 2015 season. One probably got your heart pumping and caused your mind to wonder what heights the rookie will reach in his career. Yes, this was truly a great rookie class, but the natural question to ask is just how great?

THE POSITION PLAYERS

A lot has already been written on the subject, and more will surely be written on the subject, in the attempt to quantify the greatness of this class.

Ben Lindbergh wrote about how many top prospects were making the majors. He even mentioned that “we should pause to savor the moment.” Hopefully, you heeded Lindbergh’s advice this past season. For Brewers fans, maybe it was with Taylor Jungmann or Michael Blazek; maybe it was Domingo Santana that intrigued you. Or maybe, it was a player on another team that demanded your attention. It seems logical to assume that not every year will have this sort of influx of rookie talent, and the 2015 class might even define the league for years to come.

A few weeks back, I looked at the performance of top prospects in baseball, looking at how their value during the year in which they were named on a BP Top-100 list. The evidence was pretty simple: the 2015 season was the year top prospects performed the best between 2007-2015.

Today, I’m going to analyze something different. I’m going to look at how great this 2015 rookie class was in historical context. This sort of analysis has already been done before; therefore, I wanted to look at the performance on a proportional basis and not simply look at the average or overall values. This basically means that I’m going to look at the percentage of WARP rookies contributed to the overall WARP.

I think this is a better way of looking at the situation, primarily because, while looking at this information on an overall basis might be nice, it could simply mean that the overall league is getting better as a whole. In other words, that there is more WARP. Mainly, this will allow us to see how much of the league wide contribution was thanks to rookies.

First, I looked at the position players, with a minimum of 100 plate appearances. I also included the overall rookie BWARP and the overall league BWARP, which the graphs can be found at the bottom of the visualization.

It’s pretty clear what the main graph is showing. On a proportional basis, the 2015 rookies made the greatest impact on the league. This past season, rookie hitters contributed to 13 percent of the total BWARP, which is better than any season since 1971. It also showed to be one of the biggest leaps in impact for rookies.

In 2014, all the rage seemed to center on the underperformance of rookies. Every day someone seemed to discuss the notion that it’s harder than ever to play in the majors and that the leap to the majors has never been more difficult. In fact, Alex Speier wrote a piece on this very notion. That, idea, however, was disproven to a certain extent by Ben Lindbergh. He said, “Although the trajectory is worth watching, we’re left without any proof that the leap from Triple-A to the majors is tougher than it has been at various points in the not-so-distant past.” Mainly, Lindbergh acknowledged that people felt this way due to recency effect or recency bias. It does seem to have gotten harder over the past few years to play in the majors, but if one looks at the more long-term effect, then the problem doesn’t appear to be more severe.

This winter no one seems to be talking about this issue. In fact, I haven’t been able to find a single article written on the subject. One of the biggest reasons people were worrying last season about rookie performances were due to the rookie trends in performance, but as can be seen above, that concern seems to have resolved itself in a pretty distinctive manner. In fact, the 2015 rookie class performance was 104 percent better than the previous year’s rookie class! That discrepancy in performance was the second highest since 1971. The only year that had a bigger leap in performance was from 1994 to 1995, which saw a 124 percentage change. The main reason for that was that 1994 was a shortened season due to the lockout, which gave fewer rookie’s a chance to make an impact in the majors.

That being said, if we look at the information on a per average basis, the 1987 and 2006 seasons had better performances. The 2015 campaign had an average BWARP of 0.89 while 2006 had a 0.9 BWARP and 1987 had 0.95 BWARP. These aren’t huge differences, but if one chooses to look at the information through that lens, the 2015 season isn’t exactly the best we’ve seen since 1971.

THE BREWERS SIDE

The tale of the rookie is quite different for the Brewers. I’ve already discussed, to a certain extent (and I will discuss it further in the next post), their rookie pitching is where their strength lied.

For position players, it was quite an ugly scene. The concept was still the same, however, as I looked at the Brewers’ positional rookie performance in proportion to the overall Brewers positional players. Here are the numbers, in which I’ve added the average TAv — so we won’t simply be looking at the overall BWARP. (Keep in mind, that in general an average TAv is considered to be .260).

You might be wondering where is the 2015 value? Well, the Brewers rookie hitters only represented 0.0007 percent of the total Brewers BWARP. They also weren’t a very productive rookie class with the bat averaging a .239 TAv, which is well below average.

Hernan Perez was the main culprit hurting the production. He produced a -1.0 BWARP for the season. With that being said, the Brewers didn’t have any star prospects come up and make an impact in 2015. At least not for a long enough time. Domingo Santana might very well go on to be a very productive hitter throughout his career, but he simply didn’t get enough opportunities with the Brewers to make a significant impact. He was also hurt defensively when he was stuck defensively in center field, as he finished the season with a -4.7 FRAA, which served to counteract most of his offensive output. It’s very possible, however, that next season he flourishes in a corner spot if the Brewers can finally find a suitable trade partner for Khris Davis.

The best year, in proportion for the Brewers rookies, was 1984. That, however, was mainly because the team as a whole sucked. The team went 67 and 94 and finished last in the AL East. That season, the Brewers hitters only produced 8.44 BWARP, which is the second worst in Brewers history. (It can be seen in the “Brewers BWARP 1971-2015” graph.)

Therefore, the average BWARP in this situation will probably give one a better perspective. That graph shows the best season for Brewers rookies was in 1992, which saw the rookie performance of Pat Listach, who arguably had the greatest rookie performance in Brewers history finishing with a 5.3 BWARP.

We so often talk about greatness and what it means, how important and difficult it is to find. But we don’t always seem to notice it when it’s present, when it’s happening right in front of us. It’s often by underselling the excellence of Mike Trout, LeBron James, Peyton Manning, or whomever. We always try and cling to the notion that the past was better, that the past was somehow better than the present. But, for this hitting rookie class, maybe the past wasn’t better (if it was, it was barely better). At the end of the day this positional rookie class was one for the ages, and hopefully, it’s something will remember about the 2015 season.

Thanks to the great Rob McQuown for research assistance.

First let’s acknowledge a few things. No-hitters are a little silly at their core. They’re a celebration of a pitching performance, yet that performance is not necessarily great. The problem is no-hitters are fixated on the idea of the hit and doesn’t take into account how many batters a pitcher walked or hit. It also doesn’t take into account defensive performance. After all, no-hitters can be accomplished even if an error is committed and errors are arbitrarily defined, adding to the credence that a no-hitter is an arbitrarily defined accomplishment. Often times, the no-hitter is not even the best pitching performance during the season. But, you know what? No-hitters are fun. They’re fun for the pitcher, they’re fun for the players, they’re fun for the fans, they’re even fun for those cold-hearted front-office members.

This year, even though no Brewer has thrown a no-hitter, the Brewers have been connected to two of them.

If one paid any attention to baseball this summer, one’s probably heard the name Max Scherzer mentioned a couple of times. And one’s probably heard the name mentioned in context to his two no-hitters. In fact, Scherzer’s two no-hitters in a single season are tied for the most no-hitters thrown in one campaign. But, what’s amazing is that Scherzer could have easily had three no-hitters this year.

On the fourteenth of June, Scherzer was pitching against the Brewers, and he had a no-hitter going into the seventh inning when Carlos Gomez hit this bloop single.

It was the only hit Scherzer allowed all game. He was just inches away from getting his first no-hitter, and little did he know he would go on to throw two no-hitters in 2015. This would have given him the all-time record for no-hitters thrown in one year.

That being said, as I mentioned above, there were seven no-hitters thrown this year, and if Scherzer had thrown a no-hitter that day and subsequently gone on to throw two more no-hitters, the 2015 season would have been the season with the most no-hitters recorded of all time. Here is how the historical data looks. The data was scrapped from Retrosheet’s no-hitters database.

The year that yielded the most no-hitters was 1884, which is an era that predates the dead-ball era and where baseball was still in its infancy. The mark of seven no-hitters in one-year has been done before, though. In 1990, 1991, and 2012 there were also seven no-hitters, which if one wants to exclude 1884, would be tied for the most of all-time in a single season.

There’s also evidence to suggest that we are in an era that has had more no-hitters than ever before. Here is what it looks like, on a per-decade basis.

Since 1875, the only decade that’s produced more no-hitters has been that of the 1960s, and it only produced three more than the 31, which we’ve already witnessed since 2010. Oh, ya, and we’re only five seasons into this decade. Therefore, if the no-hitters keep going at this current pace, then it will be highly probable that we’ll pass the no-hitter by decade mark next year.

The Brewers, though, as a franchise, are not exactly helping, in the rise of no-hitters in baseball. They broke up the Scherzer no-hitter, but on top of that, as a franchise, they’ve only thrown one no-hitter in their team history.

Here is what the data looks like for all current organizations.

As you can see, the Dodgers with their 26 no-hitters lead the pack, followed by the Red Sox and White Sox with 18. The Brewers are all the way at the bottom. They’re not the Padres — no pitcher in their franchise history has thrown a no-hitter — but they’re still near the bottom with the Rays, Rockies, Mets, and Blue Jays.

The Brewers, though, were able to help the Astros add another no-hitter to their franchise. This was mainly made possible with the trade of Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers to Houston. Fiers, then, went on to produce one of the best moments seen this year.

Even if you aren’t an Astros fan, it was hard not to feel joy at the site of Fiers’ amazing celebration. The smile, the way he launched his glove, and then jumped up in joy yielded one of the best pictures and moments in all of baseball. And at the end of the day that’s really what baseball is all about.

It’s a product that creates joy. It helps us suspend whatever is going on in our lives for just a few moments, and experience something that is aesthetically pleasing to our eyes. But, more importantly, baseball is supposed to be fun. Baseball is fun to play, fun to watch, fun to listen to, and fun to think about. It’s an entertainment product, and whether no-hitters are arbitrary is irrelevant. The fans, everyone in the stadium, and on television get’s wrapped up in the communal enjoyment of a singular moment. No-hitters are fun and for as long as they keep being fun, they’ll always be part of the game, and that’s ok.