Christian Yelich and Mookie Betts win MVP awards
All the award winners in one place
Welcome to MLB awards season, with the Baseball Writers Association of America honors finishing things off. The final awards were Most Valuable Players, with Christian Yelich taking home National League honors and Mookie Betts in the American League.
Blake Snell became the second Tampa Bay Rays pitcher to win the American League Cy Young Award on Wednesday. Jacob deGrom was awarded for his stellar season with the struggling Mets, capturing National League honors.
That followed Ronald Acuña Jr. and Shohei Ohtani capturing Rookie of the Year honors on Monday, followed by Braves skipper Brian Snitker and A’s manager Bob Melvin taking Manager of the Year Awards on Tuesday.
The Rawlings Gold Glove Award winners were announced on Nov. 3, and if you missed them you can’t be blamed. For some reason, the BBWAA announced that award on a Sunday night (opposite football) more than a week before the rest of this year’s MLB awards will be handed out and before the other nominees were even announced. If you missed any of the winners, you can find them here.
The Silver Slugger Awards were extra notable this season with Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez winning at not one but two positions, the first player ever to do so.
Award finalists and winners
AL Most Valuable Player
- Mookie Betts — Red Sox WINNER
- Jose Ramirez — Indians
- Mike Trout — Angels
Betts was the main cog in a Red Sox lineup that led the majors in runs and most offensive categories. The outfielder hit .346/.438/.640, leading the AL in batting average and slugging percentage, while hitting 47 doubles, 32 home runs and stealing 30 bases.
NL Most Valuable Player
- Nolan Arenado — Rockies
- Javy Baez — Cubs
- Christian Yelich — Brewers WINNER
Yelich came within an eyelash of winning the Triple Crown, and led the Brewers to the best record in the National League in his first year with Milwaukee. Yelich received 29 of 30 first-place votes in a runaway, with Baez finishing a distant second and Arenado third.
NL Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom got the other first-place vote, and finished fifth in the MVP balloting.
AL Cy Young
- Corey Kluber — Indians
- Blake Snell — Rays WINNER
- Justin Verlander — Astros
Snell led the American League with 21 wins and a 1.89 ERA, and though he only pitched 180⅔ innings the Rays left-hander packed in 219 strikeouts, the second Tampa Bay pitcher to win the award, joining David Price in 2012.
The voting was close, with Snell receiving 17 first-place votes to 13 for Verlander, outpacing the Astros right-hander 169 total points to 154.
NL Cy Young
- Jacob deGrom — Mets WINNER
- Aaron Nola — Phillies
- Max Scherzer — Nationals
Poor run support and a lost season for the Mets meant deGrom didn’t get many actual wins, finishing just 10-9. But in terms of preventing runs, nobody was better than deGrom with his 1.70 ERA in 32 starts, with a career-best 269 strikeouts in 217.
All Scherzer did after winning back-to-back NL Cys was whiff 300 batters and post a 2.53 ERA. He settles for second place in this year’s voting, his sixth straight season finishing in the top five in his league’s Cy Young balloting.
AL Rookie of the Year
- Miguel Andujar — Yankees
- Shohei Ohtani — Angels WINNER
- Gleyber Torres — Yankees
NL Rookie of the Year
- Ronald Acuña, Jr. — Braves WINNER
- Juan Soto — Nationals
- Walker Buehler — Dodgers
Shohei Ohtani, who will be out all of 2019 after undergoing Tommy John surgery, wins AL Rookie of the Year with 25 of the 30 first place votes. Acuña did him two better with 27 first place votes to take the honor in the NL.
AL Manager of the Year
- Kevin Cash — Rays
- Bob Melvin — A’s WINNER
- Alex Cora — Red Sox
NL Manager of the Year
- Bud Black — Rockies
- Craig Counsell — Brewers
- Brian Snitker — Braves WINNER
Snitker becomes the first Braves manager not named Bobby Cox to win for Atlanta, and makes sense based on how far ahead of schedule the team turned out to be this year. The A’s needed a lot of luck over the summer but exceeded expectations with Bob Melvin leading the way as well. This entire process is broken but congrats to those guys.
Awards preview
Two Yankees get the AL Rookie of the Year nod in Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar in a group that has no surprises, and NL Rookie of the Year is a similarly expected bunch with Soto, Acuña, and Buehler all making the final cut. What a strong, fun year for rookies.
Unsurprisingly, the man who managed the Red Sox to a World Series in his rookie season is here in the form of Alex Cora. Dave Roberts didn’t make the cut for Manager of the Year for leading the Dodgers back to the Fall Classic opposite Cora’s Sox, for obvious reasons though. Black, Counsell, and Snitker are all worthy candidates in that category.
The only “maybe” in the Cy Young categories was whether Chris Sale would sneak in as the third finalist, but the end of his season mostly doomed him there. The six finalists all had excellent seasons, and if deGrom doesn’t win for the National League we march at dawn.
Both of the MVP categories seem like they are already decided at this point, with both Yelich and Betts indeed in the final group as expected. Not that there can’t be surprises, but those are wins that nobody could really quibble with this year. Baez’s inclusion in the top three is a nice surprise but he probably won’t go the distance there, and Betts is all but a foregone conclusion at this point. Especially now that we know J.D. Martinez is not a finalist so is less likely to have taken a lot of votes away from Betts if that is indeed how some voters were thinking.
Tune in next week when we find out who won!