This rookie has had a season for the ages.

Gary Sanchez transitioned to Major League Baseball (MLB) in August from the Scranton/Wilkes Barre Railriders. Ever since, he has been batting in the New York Yankees lineup.

Sanchez has also become a frontrunner in the American League Rookie of the Year discussion all around the sport of baseball. Some believe that since he has played for two months, he hasn’t played long enough to deserve the honor.

Sanchez’s season has had a historical significance in the game of baseball, but his career didn’t start out as well as he may have hoped.

He has been called up to the MLB twice, but he had zero hits in six at-bats. However, when he was called up on August 3, 2016, Sanchez  became one of the best hitters in baseball. He became the first player in MLB history to win the “Player of the Month” award and “Rookie of the Month” his first month.

Sanchez hit 20 home runs and now holds the record for hitting 18 and 19 home runs the fastest. After the Yankees traded away three all-stars in exchange for prospects, Sanchez was a primary reason why the Yankees were still in the playoff race two months later.

He is now tied with Wally Berger, rookie in 1930, for being the player to hit 20 home runs the fastest, which he accomplished in just 51 games.

One statistic shows that in only two months, he has given the Yankees three more wins than if they had a regular player play instead of him, Wins Above Replacement of 3 . WAR is a complex statistic that evaluates all aspects of a player’s performance. It is heavily used by modern day baseball analysts.

Alex Rodriguez had a WAR of -.6 in the first 65 games of his career. But since Sanchez’s impact has only affected the last two months of the Yankees season, some say he shouldn’t win the Rookie of the Year.

Until Gary Sanchez debuted, Michael Fulmer, of the Detroit Tigers, was the Rookie of the Year favorite. Fulmer has a 3.06 earned run average (ERA), which means that if he had thrown three more innings this year, he would’ve been one of the top contenders for American league ERA title. The argument for Sanchez winning Rookie of the Year is that he not only has been one of the most efficient pitchers in the league, but also that he has played since April.

Fulmer has kept his team in the wild card race. The Tigers were only two and a half games behind the second wild card team, while the Yankees were eliminated far before Detroit. In the same statistical basis,WAR, proved that Gary Sanchez has given the Yankees three more wins than an average player would, Michael Fulmer has given the Tigers five more wins. Although if Sanchez played the entire season, this pace would have given him a Wins Above Replacement of ten, which is far above Most Valuable Player level.

Of course the big question is: can Sanchez win the Rookie of the Year if he has played less than a third of the year?  It has happened before. In 1959, future hall of famer Willie McCovey won the National League Rookie of the Year after playing in just 52 games, Sanchez played in 53 games. McCovey hit 13 home runs, drove in 38 runs, and had a batting average of .354. Similarly, Sanchez has hit 20 home runs, driven in 42 runs, and has a batting average of .299. The major differences are the home runs, which are significantly higher for Sanchez, and the batting average, which McCovey has a major edge in. But a .311 batting average would still place Sanchez in the top 15 in the 2016 major league leaderboards. That, in addition to his historic power numbers, make him a potential candidate for the Rookie of the Year award.

Fulmer might have had a great season, but not a record breaking season. And hall of famer, Willie McCovey, would be good company for Sanchez to join as a player who won the Rookie of the Year while only playing in a third of the season.