Lookie, Rookies! (Random Baseball Trivia Week Five)

Today's trivia nugget comes after discovering that on this day in 2001,

One year after playing Class-A ball, Albert Pujols (.329, 37, 130) is named the National League Rookie of the Year by BBWAA. The Cardinal freshman set NL rookie marks RBIs (130), total bases (360)and extra base hits (88) and fell one home run shy of tying the National League rookie record of 38 established by Frank Robinson in 1956 as a member of the Reds. I love this site


So I went looking for rookie trivia, and I stumble upon this: there are two baseball players that have won Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same year. They are:

* Fred Lynn in 1975 with the Boston Red Sox
* Ichiro Suzuki in 2001 with the Seattle Mariners

This one ain't half bad, either/

Now, of course, given Ichiro's previous playing experience in Japan, there was debate as to whether or not Ichiro should have been considered rookie of the year, but there should be no debate as to whether or not he should have won the MVP award--Seattle won 116 games in 2001.