Good morning, I’m Tyler Lauletta, subbing in for your usual host, Dan Gartland, who was once again just edged out in MVP voting by Shohei Ohtani. You’ll get ’em next year, champ!
If you’re subscribed here, you’d probably also enjoy our other morning newsletter, SI:CYMI—your daily data dump for all the quickest headlines you need to get caught up in the day that was in sports, and your watch schedule for the coming night. Enough promos, onto the newsletter.
In today’s SI:AM:
What makes an MVP?
Major League Baseball named two worthy MVPs last night, with sluggers Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge both defending their respective thrones to win the award for a second straight year. It’s the first time in history that both the AL and NL MVPs are back-to-back winners.
Looking at the numbers, both players have lights-out cases. Judge led the majors in batting average (.331), on-base percentage (.457), slugging percentage (.688), OPS (1.144) and OPS+ (215). He also scored the most runs (137) and hit the second-most home runs (53) in the AL. He is the best hitter in baseball, and it sure feels like it’s going to be a while until someone takes the title off of him. Meanwhile, Shohei Ohtani remains one of one. He’s probably the second-best hitter in baseball, one of the top sluggers in the sport, good for at least 20 steals in a down year—and he also happens to be one of the best pitchers in the world as well.
There really isn’t an argument against either player. At the same time, after the year that Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh had, it feels like something of an injustice that he didn’t get to lift the trophy. This raises (once again) the question of the definition of “value” and, more importantly, whether how “valuable” a player is to his team should determine the winner of the MVP award.
It was undeniably a close race—all 30 voters had Judge and Raleigh as the top two players on their ballots, but Judge won the race with 17 first-place votes against 13 for Raleigh. Comparing Raleigh to Judge head-to-head by the numbers, it’s not hard to see why Judge edged out the win. While Raleigh holds the edge in home runs (60 to Judge’s 53) and RBIs (125 vs. 114), Judge has Raleigh beat elsewhere basically across the board—runs scored (137 vs. 110), batting average (.331 vs. .247), OPS (1.144 vs. .948) and WAR (9.7 vs. 7.4). Raleigh’s play on the field as a catcher would likely put him over the top in the race in another year or against any other MVP contender—but Judge just spent an entire season batting a full 20 points above every other hitter in the sport (and more than 80 points clear of Raleigh).
But putting those numbers aside, and again, the numbers are close in a lot of places, you could undoubtedly make the argument that Raleigh was more “valuable” to the Mariners in terms of the, for lack of a better term, aura that he brought to this year’s Seattle squad. That sort of vibes-based analysis feels antithetical to the sport of baseball, which has been so thoroughly dissected and analyzed by statisticians, though.
This is not a knock on analytics—I love analytics for the purposes of building out a baseball roster. But when it comes to giving out the awards for a given year of baseball, would the sport possibly be better served by giving the edge in a tight race to vibes?
Awards, more than anything, tell you the story of a season at a glance. Stats can serve a similar purpose, but crucially, awards allow for human intervention where stats do not. Taking a look at the numbers 10 years from now, we’ll see that Judge was the hitting champion and Raleigh was the home run king. The MVP will be sitting next to Judge’s name, and we’ll try to place if that was the year that the Yankees made it to the ALCS or got knocked out in the ALDS. But if that MVP title was given to Raleigh, I feel like our collective recall of the year he had would be instant.
Judge was already a main character of the baseball world. That alone should not knock him down the MVP standings, but if we were to incorporate just a bit more vibes into the calculation, the award goes to Raleigh, who went from supporting player to bona fide superstar before our eyes. Narratively, this year belonged to Raleigh in a way that it simply did not to Judge. That’s worth something.
At the same time, we’ve seen “voter fatigue” across sports when it comes to MVP ballots. Through that lens, those who (rightfully) believe that LeBron James should have around seven MVP awards can rest easy knowing that the voters were not tired of Judge—or, for that matter, Ohtani—and both got their awards.
Still, it feels like a shame that Raleigh won’t get to cap off such a magical year with an award that acknowledges it. In plain terms, Judge has his MVP awards and, barring injury, will undoubtedly win a few more. While anything can happen, it feels like a tall order to ask Raleigh to come right back out and pull off another electric year like the one he just had.
Judge is the storm, swirling constantly and always forcing you to keep your eyes on the road. But Raleigh’s 2025 was a bolt of lightning, and when you think back to the storms of your past, you don’t remember the rain the same way you do the lightning.
- Tom Verducci explains how Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, winners of seven of the last 10 MVP awards, are pushing each other and edging into the company of baseball’s all-time greats.
- With a soft schedule ahead after their 27–14 win over the Jets, the Patriots have a clear path back to contender status—and maybe the AFC’s No. 1 seed—if they can stay locked in, writes Matt Verderame.
- Matt Verderame also breaks down the NFL Week 11 slate, including the Seahawks–Rams showdown with first place in the NFC West on the line, Bo Nix’s big test against Steve Spagnuolo’s Chiefs defense and other key matchups across the league.
- Andrew Brandt looks at how the Jets maximized their trade haul, assesses why Daniel Jones is poised for a windfall and remembers Commissioner Paul Tagliabue in his latest column.
- Pat Forde tells the story of how New Orleans coach Stacy Hollowell navigated a point-shaving scandal and his wife’s cancer battle—and how he emerged from a season from hell with renewed hope.
The top five…
…things I saw last night:
5. Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata is a gentleman before anything else.
4. Quarterback Josh Johnson is taking the term “journeyman” to new levels as he readies for the 10th international game of his NFL career.
3. Tony Reali dusted off his Around the Horn scoreboard with some sports content creators during an online stream. More of this, please!
2. Boise State’s goth women’s volleyball star Nora Hayd deserves every single NIL dollar.
1. To Shohei Ohtani’s dog Decoy, you are the real MVP.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM: MVP Debates, the Patriots’ Path and Hope After Heartbreak.
