MacKenzie Gore for Rookie of the Year?

A complicated question with an even more complicated answer. Get your calculators ready.

Don’t look now, but San Diego Padres pitcher MacKenzie Gore is the odds-on favorite to win the NL Rookie of the Year award (+250).

This makes sense, because I’m actually struggling to remember the last time a Padres starting pitcher was this dominant. Any Padres starting pitcher, not just a rookie.

I went through MacKenzie’s unusual path to the majors a few months back, and it’s still worth a read if you’re not already very familiar with what happened with him, but now the main question is how much of that unusual path should we still be afraid of and how much will it affect his Rookie of the Year candidacy.

Today, following a loss that can be easily summed up in one sentence (The offense was bad, the umps were bad, and Machado/Melvin got thrown out at the same time), I’m going to dig into this MacKenzie Gore math problem: Would an innings restriction hurt MacKenzie Gore’s chances?