The Baseball Writers of America have announced the finalists for their awards for the recently completed baseball season, which will be announced next week. It is a good bet that few of my original predictions for the winners will be accurate. Hopefully, these new predictions will be slightly better, especially since I’ll have a 33% chance of being right.
American League
Most Valuable Player: Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, Jose Ramirez
Judge has won this award two of the last three seasons and his performance in 2025, when healthy, would ordinarily merit a third, but I have to believe Cal Raleigh, who became just the seventh player to reach the 60-home run mark and the first to do so while catching over 1000 innings, will bring home the award.
Cy Young Award: Hunter Brown, Garrett Crochet, Tarik Skubal
With all due respect to Brown, this is a two-way race. Skubal seemed the obvious choice through much of the season, and I am guessing he will win, but Crochet probably made it much closer down the stretch.
Manager of the Year: John Schneider, Stephen Vogt, Dan Wilson
As usual, I didn’t make any predictions for this award prior to the season. Schneider would be the obvious choice if voting were done today, after leading the Blue Jays within inches of a title. Dan Wilson should also get some support for finally pushing the Mariners past the Astros. But, if I had to guess, I would say Stephen Vogt will win, after the Guardians came out of nowhere to pass the Tigers for the AL Central crown after losing Emmanuel Clase to a gambling scandal mid-year.
Rookie of the Year: Roman Anthony, Nick Kurtz, Jacob Wilson
Another award I didn’t predict prior to the season. Kurtz should run away and hide with this award after knocking 36 home runs with an OPS+ of 173.
National League
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Last week, we took our first look at the offensive leaders per season since 2019. Today, we do the same with the pitchers for all of the games I’ve attended from 1984 through the 2025 season. As with the hitters, there is little change from our first look after the 2011 season, but the time was right for another perusal of the stats. We start with that most maligned pitching stat: