Aaron Judge unanimously wins 2024 AL MVP
11/21/2024 06:44 PM
The crowning achievement for a crown jewel season.
You could watch baseball for 100 years, and some of the readers here come pretty close, and you would never see a right-handed hitter have the season Aaron Judge did. The Yankees' captain was rightfully announced as the 2024 American League Most Valuable Player today, his second time capturing the honor and becoming the first Yankee since Mickey Mantle in his Triple Crown 1956 to do so unanimously.
Hitting .322/.458/.701 with 58 bombs will do that, as Judge put up a season better than anything Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Schmidt, Joe DiMaggio, or any righty since the Roaring '20s had done. The MVP Award shouldn't just be the WAR Award, but by fWAR, Judge (11.2) was almost a full win better than runner up Bobby Witt Jr. (10.4), who himself had an all-time, historically remarkable season — one better than many past MVP campaigns by others. Witt just had the best season by a Royal in franchise history and there are some names on that list, and Bobby wasn't even close* in the MVP race this year. That's how good Judge was.
*Though somewhat amusingly, Witt was the unanimous second-place winner, taking all 30 of those votes.
MLB's capstone award this year follows Judge's win in 2022, bookending a three-year stretch of play that but for one dumb block of concrete could sit among the most dominant runs in this sport. Since the beginning of that contract year, Judge has two MVPs, a 202 wRC+, 27.0 fWAR (!!), and missed those 56 games last year — and who knows if he was truly 100 percent when he did come back.
Judge's teammate Juan Soto heads into free agency with a feather in his cap in his own right, finishing third in the voting for his third top-five finish in his first seven seasons. His defensive game might keep him from ever reaching the very top of the vote, but a 26-year-old with multiple top-five MVP runs is exactly why he's going to make the money he'll get. Baltimore's Gunnar Henderson and Cleveland's José Ramírez finished fourth and fifth, respectively.
As we speak, Shohei Ohtani is a near-lock to take home the National League MVP, which would be his third time winning the award, moving him into a very exclusive club. He'd be the 12th player in history to take home MVP honors three times, and the second after Hall of Famer Frank Robinson to win both the AL and NL versions of the award (having previously won in the Junior Circuit for 2021 and 2023). It may be sour grapes after seven seasons, but had Judge won the 2017 AL MVP, which I believe he should have, he would join the three-time-winner club with Ohtani tonight. Alas.
The end-of-season hardware has been handed out, and all the individual accolades Judge could be given he has. The trophy case is a little more full, but we all know the one piece missing from his collection. He'll get the chance to chase it again in a few months.
