The date is August 31, which means today is the last day for contending teams to acquire players for their playoff runs, which in turn means it could be a good day to get into some hot and heavy fanfic about players who cleared revocable waivers. How about... Ryan Braun goes to the Dodgers since Josh Reddick has been hitting like CYOP (that’s Choose Your Own Pitcher, and I choose... Jeremy Hellickson) and Yasiel Puig is so unbelievable toxic that he’s chilling in the minors and hitting .358/.422/.605 there while Reddick hits like CYOP (this time, I choose… Jacob deGrom). Or maybe Puig will end up on another team? He’s already been claimed, after all. Maybe he’ll be part of a crazy three-way trade where he ends up in San Francisco and then goes on to deliver a walk-off bases loaded walk to clinch the NLCS against his prior team.

Or perhaps we could maybe get into some even hotter and heavier fanfic. Where will Tim Tebow drop his knee in the MLB? Swoon. If the baseball gods care about us at all, Tebow will end up on the Yankees or the Red Sox. Of course, the baseball gods do not care about us and exist mainly to feast upon our frustration and tears, so Tebow will probably end up on the Twins or something. Still, if thinking about Tebow on the Red Sox or Yankees doesn’t get your palms sweaty, I don’t know what will.

Instead of going that route, we’re going to get into some other speculation, specifically, awards chatter. We’re far enough into the season that we can take a reasonable guess at a awards and try and figure out who will take home the hardware for Rookie of the Year. Unlike the MVP award, where the meaning is open to interpretation of what the word “valuable” means (sorry, Mike Trout), Rookie of the Year carries no such complexities. Sure, you can argue over whether a player is better than another or not, but there is no caveat that the players must be on a contending team in order for his contributions to be valuable.

We’ll start with the National League, where things are a bit (read: a lot) clearer than the Junior Circuit. Barring Corey Seager (6.9 fWAR) somehow obtaining and releasing the credit card numbers and social security numbers of BBWAA members or a very large comet colliding with Earth before the awards are announced, Seager is almost 100% certainly (and rightly) going to win NL Rookie of the Year. That doesn’t mean it’s not interesting to talk about, though. It is, I promise, since rookies are just the best, what with all of their limitless potential just starting to be realized. The only thing better is prospects.

Speaking of, Seager was the number two prospect in MLB last season and impressed in his first callup last September, hitting .337/.425/.561 in his first 27 games. While he’s “taken a step back” from his 176 wRC+ over that one month sample size, he’s hitting .320/.379./540 over a much more reasonable 127 game sample size this year, good for a 148 wRC+ on the year. That is, of course, with his rough April where he hit a ton of ground balls, didn’t hit for much in the way of power and sported a relatively low BABIP, en route to a 90 wRC+, despite putting up solid BB% and K% numbers.

Once May rolled around, though, Seager sorted it out and didn’t look back. His 6.9 fWAR isn’t just Rookie of the Year material, it’s MVP material. The only player in the NL with more of those fWAR thingies is Kris Bryant (7.6 fWAR), and he’s looking more and more like a lock to take home that award with all of his 35 home runs and the fact that he plays for the world beating Cubs. Plus, there’s the fact that a big chunk of Seager’s value comes from his excellent defense, which won’t necessarily woo BBWAA voters in an MVP-off. In terms of the Rookie of the Year voting, though, it doesn’t matter, because Seager has been the best hitter of his class while also providing a ton of defensive value at a premium position. If we’re truly in the Golden Age of Shortstops, it seems only fitting that a shortstop should take home the award.

Of course, it wasn’t so long ago that there was another shortstop who might have been in the conversation. Trevor Story (2.6 fWAR) may not have played since July 30, but he still manages to lead all rookies in home runs. It’s not just the chicks, baseball writers love them some dingers, too. Surely you’ve heard the about it as many times by now as you’ve heard puns about his name, but Story started off the year on a ridiculous tear, tied for first at the end of April with teammate Nolan Arenado for the most home runs in MLB with 10.

He came out of nowhere, took the world by storm and then, the league adjusted and he went from a 142 wRC+ in April to a 83 wRC+ in May. Story wasn’t done, though, and adjusted back, struck out less and walked more in June, when he put up a 118 wRC+ and then put it all together and brought back most of the power he had demonstrated earlier in July but with less strikeouts, en route to a 143 wRC+. Defensively, Story grades as pretty much an average shortstop, but when you hit enough dingers, you’re bound to get some votes tossed your way. Here’s to hoping that Story comes back next year and continues to figure things out and is a part of the promising youth movement in Colorado, but, for now, his injury means he’s pretty much out of the running.

The same goes for (surprise) another shortstop, Aledmys Diaz (2.5 fWAR), who is also injured and last played one day after Story on July 31. Diaz may not have the power that Story has, but he also doesn’t strike out like Story does either. Like Story, though, Diaz’s season was a story of breaking out in April, where he hit .423/.453/.732 for a wRC+ of 215 (!!!), the league adjusting (his wRC+ was 91 in May) and then Diaz figuring it out and improving, albeit not to the insane level of his April. His .312/.372/.518 season line over just one less game than Story is good for a 135 wRC+, likely making him a more valuable hitter than Story in the long term, but he also grades out slightly below average defensively as a shortstop.

If Seager was out of the picture things would get interesting really quickly, what with the seasons that Story and Diaz had before their injuries and then we would have to consider position players who have been extremely valuable with way less playing time. Players like the 28-year old rookie Ryan Schimpf (2.2 fWAR) who has three-true-outcomed his way into 16 home runs over only 230 plate appearances and leads MLB in at bats per home run (11.9). Players like Trea Turner (2.2 fWAR) who has a .344 AVG in his 43 games (while holding down a remarkable 3.1 BB% and a .415 BABIP).

And that’s just the position players. Jon Gray (2.9 fWAR) is another big part of the Rockies’ aforementioned youth movement and, even though his ERA (4.41) isn’t very sexy, his peripherals are great. The fact that he’s putting up the numbers he is as a rookie at Coors Field has to be worth some votes even if peripherals likely aren’t as important as ERA to BBWAA voters.

Steven Matz (2.8 fWAR) hasn’t been as impressive as he was in his limited time in 2015, and he’s still on the DL.

Kenta Maeda (2.6 fWAR) has been generally excellent and may have rookie eligibility, but voters are hesitant to give the award to players coming over from Japan or Korea, so he’d be a long shot no matter what.

And then there’s reliever Seung-hwan Oh (2.5 fWAR), but Final Boss is 34 and going to suffer from the same voter issues as Maeda, despite his ridiculous numbers befitting his nickname (1.70 ERA, 1.88 FIP, 11.74 K/9, 2.09 BB/9, 0.39 HR/9).

Unfortunately for all the other rookies kicking it in the National League, Seager does actually exist and pretty much has this in the bag, barring anything totally bizarre happening. He was the starter from day one and has stayed healthy and continued to hit and defend well. I’d wager a guess that Los Angeles is pretty glad they held onto Seager, even if he might have made, say, a Cole Hamels deal happen.

Where the Senior Circuit is fairly cut and dry, well, its younger brother is... not so much. There’s no Seager-like Godzilla, emerging fully formed from the ocean at the beginning of the season to lay waste to opposing pitchers or hitters. In fact, the rookie class for the NL is generally much more impressive of a larger sample size, but that’s not to say that there’s not plenty of young talent in the AL. Someone is going be crowned AL Rookie of the Year, and we’ll be back soon to engage in some spirited debate on that topic.