As rookie stars Corey Seager, Kenta Maeda and Tyler Naquin get set for the MLB postseason, there’s a question that begs answering: Which first-year standouts have authored the best October showings in baseball history?
Before we set out to answer that question and rank the rookies, let’s break down the selection criteria and just who exactly is eligible for this list.
The idea here is to focus on a given player’s entire body of work. For that reason, the rankings only include players from the Division Series era because those players had an extra round to stack up numbers and polish their respective resumes.
All of the players who made the grade had monster postseason performances, so the tiebreaker was the magnitude of the moment. The higher the stakes, the more credit a player got.
Subsequently, the vast majority of players on this list were members of World Series-winning teams. Additionally, several of them had rookie teammates who also landed a spot in the top 10.