Without controversy or even the slightest dissent, the Most Valuable Player Awards held no drama. Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees and Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers won their respective league awards unanimously Thursday.
Be careful before you dismiss inevitability as routine. Don’t ever make the mistake of taking greatness for granted, especially this rare kind of greatness among us.
Judge and Ohtani are not just the pillars of MLB as the two best, most popular and most influential players in the game who happen to play in the two largest markets. They also are historically significant and unique players who share a deeper connection with these MVP awards.
They have won five MVPs in the past four years. Everybody else in baseball combined has three.
And they may just be arriving at the peak of their powers. This year Judge and Ohtani each set personal highs in plate appearances, WAR, runs batted in and total bases. Each reached their first World Series.
Judge is an all-time great slugger who plays center field at 6’7”. He hit 50 home runs for a third season. The only other player to do so without a connection to PEDs is Babe Ruth.
Ohtani became the first player to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases in the same season. No 50-homer slugger had ever swiped more than 24 bags until Ohtani just blew up all norms and racked up 59.
There has never been a player like Ohtani. Next season, with his repaired right elbow, he will take up a fifth season of full-time pitching and hitting in which he is so good he competes for a Cy Young Award and a home run title. Ruth had only two such double duty years.
Judge is the best hitter in baseball. Ohtani is the best player. Two Hall of Famers have been MVP in the same year 27 times. But to find years with inner-circle Hall of Famers, you must go back to 1980 with George Brett and Mike Schmidt, ‘66 with Frank Robinson and Roberto Clemente, ‘57 with Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron, ‘49 with Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson and ‘46 with Williams and Stan Musial.
It’s not a stretch to think of Judge and Ohtani as this generation’s Mantle and Aaron. Like Mantle and Aaron in 1957, Judge and Ohtani met in the World Series in their MVP seasons. They gave us something never seen before in the 119 previous World Series: two 50-homer sluggers going against each other in the Fall Classic.
They helped the World Series—even without the drama of a Game 6 or 7—draw an average audience of 15.8 million viewers, the highest rated World Series of five or fewer games since 2007, which is an eternity ago in terms of the media landscape. That does not include an additional 15 million people in Japan who started their mornings watching the World Series.
The major league batting average this season was .243. Since the mound was lowered in 1969, hitting has never been more difficult. (It also was .243 in 2022.) And yet in addition to slugging 58 home runs, Judge hit .322. In addition to slugging 54 home runs, Ohtani hit .310.
There have been only 32 seasons in which a .300 hitter mashed 50 homers. This was only the third time it was done by two players in the same year with no connection to PEDs, joining Johnny Mize and Ralph Kiner in 1947 and Hank Greenberg and Jimmie Foxx in ‘38.
Wait. There’s more to their greatness. These guys can also run. Judge and Ohtani accounted for two of the only 13 seasons in which a player hit .300 with 50 homers . This marked only the second time two players did it in the same season, but the first time without the taint of PEDs (Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez in 2001).
More still. Think about how they can hit for average and run so well . Judge and Ohtani, who is 6’4”, are massive. Until this year, only three players as tall as 6'4" had hit .300 with 50 homers, all of them traditional lumbering sluggers: Mark McGwire, Jim Thome and Ryan Howard. Add the double digit stolen bases and Judge (who has done it twice) and Ohtani are unique big men in the game’s history.
One of my favorite descriptions of Ohtani during the World Series came from Dino Ebel, the Dodgers third base coach.
“When Shohei comes around third base,” Ebel said, “you can him. Even in a loud stadium, you can hear this rumble because he is so big and runs so fast.”
I imagined Ohtani as a freight train turning a bend. Size, power and speed rattling the earth and shaking the air with a thunderous roar.
Judge and Ohtani are outliers among outliers. The average American man born in 1980 is about two inches taller than one born in ‘20 (though since ‘80 American men are getting shorter compared to the world population.) We see this growth in height across all sports.
When Mantle (listed at 5'11") and Aaron (6') won their MVPs in 1957, there were only two qualified hitters at least 6'4" (Jim Lemon and Dale Long). By 2017 there were 26. But since then, as this chart shows, there has been a downturn in tall hitters:
The game is full of transcendent stars, including Juan Soto, who this winter is likely to surpass the record $46 million present-day average annual value of Ohtani’s contract and make Judge’s $40 million average annual value appear to be a bargain. But when it comes to the best players in the game, there is Judge and Ohtani, a gap, and everyone else.
The only impediment to Judge and Ohtani being inner-circle Hall of Famers is health. When they are healthy, they dominate. Period. Both have posted four qualified full seasons. In MVP voting during their qualified seasons, Judge has finished first, first, second and fourth. Ohtani has finished first, first, first and second (losing out only to Judge and his 62 home runs in 2022).
Judge, 32, has played 133 more career games than Ohtani, 30. Their superlatives are darn close:
Judge
Ohtani
MVP awards
2
3
Unanimous MVPs
1
3*
All-Star Games
6
4
HR titles
3
2
Silver Sluggers
4
3
Hank Aaron Awards
2
2
Judge and Ohtani. Ohtani and Judge. They are linked by more than the 2024 MVPs. They are playing the game at an unprecedented level for players of their size. Along with the pitch timer, they are among the most influential elements driving the game into a new era of global popularity. And based on what we saw this year, they are only now entering their peak years. They will shape MVP races and baseball history for years to come.
