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For as good a year as Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. had and same for the Yankees Juan Soto, we knew they were not going to win the American League's MVP award. On Thursday that went to New York’s Aaron Judge, who got all 30 first-place votes as a unanimous selection.
Witt was second in the voting, Soto was third and the Orioles' Gunnar Henerson was fourth. A strong showing for the Baltimore shortstop, who was eighth in the AL MVP vote in 2023 when he was the AL Rookie of the Year.
Soto finished with 229 points in the balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and Gunnar was at 208. On six of 30 ballots, the writer placed Henderson third, ahead of Soto.
What O’s fan would not celebrate that?
An Oriole being voted on a few ballots ahead of a Yankee, especially one with hot dog tendencies that has the cocky approach of Soto.
There is publicly available data from outlets like FanGraphs.com and BaseballSavant.com that can provide us some, shall we say, just beyond the basic stats information.
My curiosity yesterday led me to this question: How did opponents pitch the Orioles this season? Did they get more fastballs than other teams saw or less? Which pitches did they see more than others?
Here is what the O's batters were thrown this year and how that ranked in MLB and the ranking is from first (as in they saw the most fastballs to 30th, they saw the least) to least.
* Fastballs - 47.6 percent, 16th in MLB.
* Sliders - 20.1 percent, 30th in MLB.
There was a point late this summer when it looked like there was a legitimate two-man race for National League MVP. Yes, Shohei Ohtani was doing his usual thing in Los Angeles, but Francisco Lindor was playing out of his mind as well for a Mets club making a surprise run at the postseason.
Could Lindor actually beat out Ohtani for the most prestigious individual award in baseball?
In the end, the answer was a clear no. While Lindor did help get New York into the playoffs, he missed eight key games down the stretch with a back injury. Ohtani, meanwhile, had a closing stretch for the ages: seven homers, 11 stolen bases and an insane .547/.586/1.057 slash line over his final 12 games, during which he became the first player in major league history in the 50/50 Club.
So it came as no surprise Thursday night when Ohtani was named the 2024 NL MVP in a unanimous vote. It’s the third MVP of his illustrious career, and he joins the immortal Frank Robinson as the only players in history to win MVP in both leagues.
That historic performance made Ohtani an easy decision for me on my MVP ballot, which I was fortunate enough to receive this year as one of two designated voters from the Baltimore/Washington chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. I’ve voted for MVP several times before, and sometimes it’s been a tough call. I remember waiting until the final day of the 2007 season before picking Jimmy Rollins over Matt Holliday. This one really wasn’t a tough call in the end.
It’s awards season around baseball as the offseason continues. Major League Baseball handed out several individual awards and named the All-MLB teams on Thursday. And the Baseball Writers' Association of America announced the finalists for its major awards this past week, with the winners to be announced over the next four days.
Unsurprisingly, the Nationals were shut out from bringing home any hardware. And it’s been a while since any has come Washington's way. But looking ahead, could the Nats have any contenders in 2025?
Note: This is only taking players currently in the organization under consideration. Of course, there could be other candidates added to the mix this offseason.
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
Last finalist: Juan Soto (2021)
Last winner: Bryce Harper (2015)
The biggest award of the year is probably the biggest stretch for any Nationals player. The Nats as a team would have to take a big leap forward with one of their budding stars leading the way, or have one of those stars have an unbelievable season on his own.
After a stretch of days where another MLB Draft has come and gone and we’ve seen Gunnar Henderson start the All-Star game at shortstop for the American League, it is still somewhat remarkable that the Orioles got an MVP caliber talent with the 42nd pick in 2019.
If you look back at some picks in that 2019 draft just ahead of Henderson’s selection by the Orioles, Tampa Bay took JJ Goss, Pittsburgh selected Sammy Siani, the Yankees took T.J. Sikkema, the Twins took Matt Wallner, who at least has made the majors. With a selection at No. 40 that draft, the Rays took pitcher Seth Johnson, who is now an Oriole.
Those teams could have had Gunnar.
A few days ago in the Baltimore clubhouse, Henderson, from Selma, Ala., remembered thinking as that draft approached that he would go higher than he did.
“Yeah. I had talked to some scouts, and they made it sound like I would definitely be their (team’s) pick if I fell to them,” he said. “But I was also told draft night, always expect the worst. Stuff like that happens. It was definitely a whirlwind of a night for me.”
Awards Week wraps up tonight with the announcement of the two leagues’ MVP winners, and you’re forgiven if you haven’t been paying attention to this stuff. Because, really, why would you this year?
Unless some rogue writer gave Joey Meneses a 10th place MVP vote, the Nationals will have been shut out entirely from discussion about the four major awards handed out annually by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America: Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year. Not a single member of the team will have received a vote on anybody’s ballot for any of the awards (unless you want to count Juan Soto or Josh Bell, who spent four months in D.C. before they were traded to San Diego).
That simply hasn’t been the case around here in a very long time.
How long? Not since 2008 have the Nationals failed to receive at least one down-ballot vote for National League MVP. In fact, at least two players had received votes each of the last six years, with three or more players receiving votes in three of those years.
The Nats have had only one actual MVP in their existence: Bryce Harper, the unanimous selection in 2015 despite the team’s disappointing record. But they’ve always found themselves in the discussion, with top-three finishes in several other years and almost always at least one top-10 finisher.
Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman is in the thick of the voting for American League Rookie of the Year. While waiting for next month’s announcement, he has become the recipient of a local honor bestowed annually by media covering the team.
Rutschman has been voted Most Valuable Oriole, the third rookie since the award’s inception in 1954, joining pitchers Gregg Olson in 1989 and Rodrigo López in 2002. He’s just the third catcher to be named MVO, along with Gus Triandos in 1958 and Chris Hoiles in 1993.
The Orioles are 66-53 since Rutschman’s promotion on May 21 as baseball’s No. 1 prospect. And it isn’t a coincidence.
There’s lots of data to back it up.
The first-overall selection in the 2019 draft is slashing .251/.356/.444 in 110 games, with 34 doubles, one triple, 13 home runs, 42 RBIs, 61 walks and 84 strikeouts. Baseball-Reference.com assigns him a 5.0 WAR.
