Major League Baseball's awards week has finally arrived.
On Thursday, MLB will announces its league MVPs.
The American League race is one that has been captivating all season. Will it be New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, or Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh?
ESPN released predictions for all the awards on Monday, and their writer Bradford Doolittle has predicted Raleigh will win MVP.
Here's his logic:
Despite the easy statistical case for Judge, I see this as a case in which the narrative and intangible elements overwhelm the metrics. And that's not to undersell Raleigh's metrics, which are more than MVP
Again, we'll get into the nitty gritty of the numbers later, but the soft factors that swing my thinking are these: Raleigh's 60-homer season is the stuff of science fiction when viewed through the lens of what's expected from every-day catchers. It not only shattered the single-season mark for the position, but it broke Mickey Mantle's record for homers by a switch-hitter. Mickey freaking Mantle. And Raleigh's a (darn good) catcher!
Finally, Raleigh did all of this as the defensive anchor and clubhouse leader on a division champion. There aren't many seasons when I'd pick someone as MVP over the 2025 version of Aaron Judge, but this is one of them. Sure, I'm a stat guy, so this feels like a departure from that foundation, but sometimes a narrative is just too compelling to ignore.
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A lot of that makes sense.
It's sort of a question of, if this season by this catcher can't win MVP, when could a catcher ever win the award again?
Of course, Judge is exceptional. He's one of the greatest right-handed hitters ever, and this was yet another remarkable season by him.
But Raleigh had one of those standalone seasons that doesn't come around too often. It'll be memorable for so many reasons.
And if it has an MVP to go with it, it'll be even tougher to forget.
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