John Means’s bid to become the first Orioles player to win the Rookie of the Year award since Gregg Olson in 1989 has come up just short. He finished in second place to Houston’s Yordan Alvarez, so Means will have to settle for being the first Oriole to be the runner-up since Rodrigo Lopez in 2002.
With Alvarez racking up 27 home runs in only 87 games for a playoff-bound team, there wasn’t a whole lot of question about whether or not he would end up winning. The only real question was how close someone else, in this case Means, might be able to make it.