1 month ago
10
With different 2 months until shot writers ballot for the Most Valuable Players, Cy Young Award winners and Rookies of the Year, present seems the cleanable clip for a acold wider-ranging acceptable of honors for Major League Baseball's 2025 season.
The 3rd yearly Passan Awards purpose to observe the astir enjoyable elements of a play and admit that adjacent those who aren't the champion of the champion merit acknowledgment. Certainly, the winners are talented, but the players favored to triumph the MVP awards for the 2nd consecutive season, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, volition not get this hardware. Instead, the archetypal grant honors a subordinate for his anatomy.
Badonkadonk of the Year: Cal Raleigh
As if it could beryllium anyone else.
Ball knowers understood who Raleigh was entering the 2025 season: the champion catcher successful MLB, a switch-hitting, Platinum Glove-winning, home-run-punishing leader with the astir due (and inappropriate) nickname successful shot -- the Big Dumper, for his little fractional putting the maximus successful gluteus.
This, though? A superstar crook successful which the Seattle Mariners' champion subordinate passes Hall of Famers specified arsenic Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey Jr. successful the grounds books? A season-long tally successful which helium keeps gait with Aaron Judge, the champion hitter successful the satellite inactive astatine the highest of his powers, successful the American League MVP race? A morganatic changeable astatine becoming lone the seventh subordinate successful MLB past to deed 60 oregon much location runs successful a season.
Look hard capable and it makes sense. A play similar Raleigh's 2025 necessitates playing each day, which, astatine a presumption wherever 120 games is the norm, is astir impossible. Well, Raleigh has sat retired 3 games this year. Amid each his responsibilities arsenic a catcher, helium has taken a right-handed plaything that was the weaker of the 2 and honed it into a changeable arsenic almighty arsenic his left-handed wallop.
The confluence of it each successful Raleigh's age-28 play has thrust the Mariners to the precipice of their archetypal AL West rubric since 2001 and enactment Raleigh connected a pedestal alongside Judge. Raleigh's lawsuit for MVP is strong. He has got the numbers to backmost up the narrative, which could beryllium precise compelling for voters: the game's 2025 location tally king, playing its astir important position, carries the franchise with whom helium signed a semipermanent hold to the postseason portion the prima successful the Bronx, already a two-time AL MVP winner, doesn't bash thing antithetic than helium typically does.
Of course, conscionable maintaining his presumption quo is really a beauteous bully lawsuit for Judge, considering his OPS exceeds Raleigh's by astir 175 points. But that's for MVP voters to decide. The lawsuit of the champion badonkadonk is unfastened and shut. From the metropolis that gave the satellite Sir Mix-A-Lot comes mentation 2.0: bigger, better, dumpier.
Slugger of the Year: Kyle Schwarber
None of this is caller for Schwarber, the 32-year-old who has spent the past 4 seasons with the Philadelphia Phillies arsenic the National League's three-true-outcomes demigod. Schwarber is 3rd successful the NL successful walks (behind Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani), 2nd successful strikeouts (behind James Wood) and tied with Ohtani for the pb with 53 location runs. Beyond the season-long compilation of gaudy numbers, though, are the moments that person appended "of the year" onto the slugger statement helium agelong agone earned.
When NL manager Dave Roberts needed hitters for the All-Star Game swing-off -- a truncated Home Run Derby that would interruption the game's 6-6 necktie -- of course, helium chose Schwarber, who whacked 3 location runs connected 3 swings and secured the win. If anyone successful the athletics was poised to spell connected a single-game heater and ...
English (US) ·