This Season’s Outstanding Crop of Rookie Sluggers Looks Like the Real Thing

Veteran baseball men usually view touted rookies with a skeptical eye. This year’s crop of young sluggers, however, has convinced the most experienced managers they are not just passing phenoms.

Detroit manager Sparky Anderson, who has seen several celebrated rookies fall flat in his 17 years managing in the big leagues, watched California’s Wally Joyner hit two home runs May 16 to power the Angels to an 11-1 victory over the Tigers. Joyner hit another homer in the series finale on May 18, but it was lost when the game was rained out.

Asked if he had ever seen as powerful a group of rookie hitters come up to the majors in one year, Anderson replied: “I never have. This is the first time there’s so many that you can look at and say, ‘There’s a 10-year guy who’s going to be a dominant factor.’

“Usually you say, ‘Let’s look at him for a year and wait and see,’ ” Anderson added. “But with kids like (Jose) Canseco and Joyner, you know they’ve got it.”

Through the Angels’ first 37 games, Joyner led the major leagues with 37 RBIs and 15 home runs. At that pace, he would finish the season with 162 RBIs and a record 65 home runs.

Through Oakland’s first 38 games, Canseco was third in the A.L. in homers with 11 and second in RBIs with 34. Canseco’s clip would give him a more humble 47 home runs and 145 RBIs.

Joyner and Canseco are leading the rookie parade around the bases, but there are several others blasting home runs.

Through games of May 19, Pete Incaviglia of Texas hit eight homand Seattle’s Danny Tartabull, who was on the 15-day disabled list, had six. In the National League, San Francisco’s Will Clark had five homers and Andres Galarraga of the Expos belted four.

California’s Gene Mauch, in his 25th year managing in the majors, remembers the last time a group of young hitters as talented as this year’s came up to the major leagues.

“You’d probably have to go back to ’46 when there were so many guys coming back from the war,” said Mauch. “This is a nice crop.

“Necessity breeds your smartest moves. There was probably a need in Oakland and a need in Texas. When there’s a need, players get the opportunity and respond to it.”

Earl Weaver of the Baltimore Orioles, who trails only Mauch and Anderson in victories among active managers, says Canseco and Joyner could represent just the beginning of a new wave of sluggers.

“The National League’s young power hitters could be just as good and the American League’s could just be a year ahead of them,” Weaver said. “It’s possible that the draft has something to do with it, but I can’t tell you what.”

The last rookie to hit 30 home runs in a season was Ron Kittle of the Chicago White Sox, with 35 in 1983. Fourteen players in major league history have hit 30 or more homers in their rookie year, with Wally Berger and Frank Robinson sharing the rookie mark of 38. This year, Canseco or Joyner could easily break that record and Incaviglia is on a pace to join the 30-home-run club.

“I’ve got 15 home runs, I’ve never hit that many before in my life,” says Joyner, who hit 12 homers in each of his two full seasons in the minors. “I’m swinging hard, and the balls are just going over the fence, but I’m not a home-run hitter.”