AL MVP: Shohei Ohtani - SP/DH, Angels
The only thing that can possibly stand between Shohei Ohtani and his second American League MVP award in the last three years would be if the Angels once again failed to live up to expectations, and Ohtani is traded to a National League contender at the deadline. With free agency looming, and with it the largest contract in MLB history, Ohtani will look to build his value this season by continuing to impress as the unquestioned best player in the world. After a historic 2021 season that saw him launch 46 home runs while bringing home unanimous MVP honors, Ohtani followed up in 2022 by improving his batting average while finishing fourth in AL Cy Young voting; only losing out on the MVP due to a historic season that saw Aaron Judge set the American League record with 62 home runs.
Despite already being considered the best player in baseball, Ohtani continues to show improvement year after year. Last season, Ohtani reworked his slider to have more of a sweeping action while also making it his most thrown pitch. This resulted in the second most valuable pitch in baseball according to Baseball Savant’s run value metric, trailing only Dylan Cease’s slider, and ahead of Cy Young Award winners, Sandy Alcantara’s changeup and Justin Verlander’s fastball. Recently, Ohtani would set a new personal best by clocking in at 102 mph on a fastball to sit down the Royals’ Vinnie Pasquantino while leading Japan past Italy in the World Baseball Classic quarterfinals. A uniquely powerful player as both a pitcher and a hitter, last season he was fifth in average fastball velocity among starting pitchers at 97.3 mph, while also registering the third hardest hit ball by any batter, a 119.1 mph double off of the Astros’ José Urquidy.
Shohei Ohtani is a historically talented player, recently winning MVP of the World Baseball Classic while leading Japan to the championship with an epic strikeout of his Angels teammate, Mike Trout. If he just maintains the level of play he has had over the last two seasons, let alone somehow improves on it, he should run away with the MVP award and set himself up to become the most desired free agent in MLB history.
Runner Up: Julio Rodríguez - OF, Mariners
Dark Horse: Wander Franco - SS, Rays
AL Cy Young: Cristian Javier - SP, Astros
Last season, the Astros’ rotation featured two players that finished in the top five in American League Cy Young voting: unanimous winner Justin Verlander, who led the AL in wins, ERA, and WHIP; and fifth-place finisher Framber Valdez, who posted a 2.82 ERA across an AL-best 201.1 innings. With Verlander departing for the Mets in free agency, Valdez looks set to take over the ace role in Houston’s rotation, but that is not who I think will be their best pitcher in 2023.
Cristian Javier bounced between the starting rotation and bullpen across his first two seasons with Houston’s big league squad, starting 19 games and coming out of the bullpen in 29 more. But after becoming a full-time member of the rotation in mid-May, Javier went on to post a 2.83 ERA while striking out 169 batters in 127 innings. He would continue that dominance in the postseason as the Astros captured another World Series title, not allowing a run in his two starts, which included pitching the first six innings of a no-hitter against the Phillies in game four of the World Series. That wasn’t even his first contribution to a no-hitter in 2022, as he threw seven no-hit innings with 13 strikeouts against a dangerous Yankees lineup back in June. Among American League pitchers with at least 140 innings pitched last season, Javier ranked sixth in SIERA at 3.14 and second in strikeout rate at 33.2%, trailing only Shohei Ohtani. While he doesn’t throw particularly hard, with his average fastball coming in at only 93.8 mph, putting him in the 55th percentile, Javier’s fastball has incredible vertical movement, dropping an average of only 12.2 inches, which is three inches better than the average fastball of similar velocity, second only to Nestor Cortes among starting pitchers. He pairs that fastball with a devastating slider that trailed only Andrés Muñoz in xwOBA allowed among pitchers who ended at least 150 plate appearances with a slider.
It will be a bit of an adjustment for Javier as he moves into a bigger role in both the rotation and organization as a whole, having signed a five-year, $64 million extension in the offseason. But throughout his young MLB career, Javier has proven that he has the stuff to be absolutely dominant, no matter what role he is featured in.
Runner Up: Shohei Ohtani - SP, Angels
Dark Horse: George Kirby - SP, Mariners
AL Rookie of the Year: Masataka Yoshida - OF, Red Sox
Masataka Yoshida straight-up rakes. Across seven NPB seasons in Japan, the four-time All-Star has a career slash line of .327/.421/.539 and has shown continual improvement every season, with his OPS going up during every year of his career, peaking at 1.007 in 2022. Recently, he led all players with 13 RBIs across seven World Baseball Classic games, slashing .401/.531/.727 while helping lead Samurai Japan to a championship, showing that he can compete with the best players in the world on the biggest stage. Yoshida has a beautiful left-handed swing, able to spray the ball all over the park, and controls the strike zone with incredible discipline, having walked 361 times to only 235 strikeouts over his past five NPB seasons. Last year, he had the second-highest walk rate and second-lowest strikeout rate among qualified NPB hitters, and most of his numbers trailed only Munetaka Murakami, the back-to-back Central League MVP who ranks as FanGraphs’ top international free agent. Last year, Yoshida finished the season ranking second in batting average, on-base percentage, OPS, and wRC+ in the NPB.
Yoshida is also loved by various projection systems. Across the seven different systems that FanGraphs shows on their website, Yoshida’s average projected slash line is .295/.371/.471, and he ranks within the top 50 in projected wRC+, and in the top 15 in projected on-base percentage in every one of them.
Yoshida projects to be somewhat limited defensively as he transitions to the MLB, only playing left field in 39 of his 119 games last season with the Orix Buffaloes and DHing in the other 80, but he should be helped by Fenway’s small left field where most balls will ricochet off the Green Monster before they get too far away from him. Regardless of how he fits into the other aspects of Major League Baseball, the hitter that has dominated the world’s second-best league for the past seven years should be enough to bring home Rookie of the Year honors this season.
Runner Up: Anthony Volpe - SS, Yankees
Dark Horse: Logan O’Hoppe - C, Angels
NL MVP: Ronald Acuña Jr. - OF, Braves
When Ronald Acuña Jr. tore his ACL just ahead of the 2021 All-Star break, he was easily in the conversation for NL MVP with a .283/.394/.596 slash line, 24 home runs, and 17 steals through 82 games. Unfortunately, a wrong step trying to chase down a Jazz Chisholm Jr. fly ball prematurely ended his season before those MVP hopes could come to fruition. When he finally returned at the end of April, you could tell that he wasn’t the same. After never ranking below the 95th percentile in sprint speed over his first four seasons, Acuña dropped to the 82nd percentile and was worth -7 Statcast outs above average, by far the worst of his career. While he was still hitting the ball hard, ranking in the top 13% of the league in average exit velocity, his average launch angle had decreased from 18.2 degrees in 2021 down to 10.8 degrees in 2022, meaning he was no longer hitting the ball in the air as much, which was taking away from his overall power numbers at the plate. Although the consistent dominance of his early seasons was not there, the flashes of one of the best players in baseball still were, like a 464-foot home run or a 116.6 mph double.
Now, more than a year removed from the devastating injury, Acuña will still only be 25 years old for the entire upcoming season and he is now just entering what should be the peak of his career. Despite his sprint speed slowing down, Acuña still managed to steal 29 bases in only 117 games, which ranked seventh in the entire league. This year he will once again attempt to become only the fifth player to reach the 40 home run, 40 steal club after just barely falling short with 41 home runs and 37 stolen bases in 2019. He will firmly solidify his place as one of the best players in the world again as he competes for his first MVP.
Runner Up: Juan Soto - OF, Padres
Dark Horse: Austin Riley - 3B, Braves
NL Cy Young: Aaron Nola - SP, Phillies
If you take a basic look at Aaron Nola’s numbers from 2022 and see an 11-13 record and a 3.25 ERA, you probably wouldn’t expect him to have finished fourth in last season’s NL Cy Young voting. But with Nola, you have to look beyond the most basic statistics to see how truly great of a pitcher he is. He essentially just does everything that a pitcher should do really well: striking out lots of batters, while limiting both his walks and hard contact. Last season, Nola only allowed a hard-hit ball on 31.6% of batted balls against him, which placed him within the top 8% of pitchers in the league. Additionally, his 29.1% strikeout rate and 3.6% walk rate ranked fifth and second among qualified pitchers last season. Nola also continues to get better over time, having lowered his walk and hard-hit rates for the third straight year in 2022. While his 3.25 ERA ranked only 23rd among qualified pitchers last season, Nola’s 2.58 FIP, 2.77 xFIP, and 2.80 SIERA were all among the top five in the league, which is important as those stats are all much better predictors of future performance than just basic ERA.
Along with the dominance that he has shown on the mound, the sheer volume that Nola has been able to maintain it over has also contributed to his value, as last season he finished first in fWAR and fourth in bWAR among pitchers. Not counting 2020’s shortened season, where he still qualified for the ERA title and finished seventh in Cy Young voting, Nola has thrown over 200 innings every year since 2018 except for 2021, where he still threw 180.2. This stretch of consistency is highlighted by a monster 2018 campaign that saw him finish third in NL Cy Young voting while leading all pitchers with 9.7 pitcher bWAR.
Although Shohei Ohtani will still be the top free agent prize come next winter, Nola looks like he could potentially garner the biggest contract of any starting pitcher who doesn’t also rank in the top ten of wRC+ over the last two seasons. I think that in a contract year, Nola’s traditional stats will catch up to the incredible underlying numbers that he has posted throughout his career, and he will be considered one of the best pitchers in baseball by the time his payday comes due.
Runner Up: Corbin Burnes - SP, Brewers
Dark Horse: Blake Snell - SP, Padres
NL Rookie of the Year: Corbin Carroll - OF, Diamondbacks
After a shoulder injury limited the former #16 overall pick to only seven games in the return to full-season minor league play in 2021, Corbin Carroll would bounce back to slash an impressive .303/.424/.604 over 91 games across AA and AAA in the Diamondbacks system in 2022. This impressive minor league performance, along with an .830 OPS after getting called up to the majors in late August, was enough to jump him up from #19 on MLB Pipeline’s pre-2022 ranking, all the way up to the #2 ranked prospect in all of baseball ahead of the 2023 season.
When Carroll was drafted with the #16 overall selection of the 2019 draft out of Seattle’s Lakeside High School, it was already well-known that he had the contact, speed, and defensive tools that would eventually translate to the major league level. But the development of his power across the minor leagues has been the thing that has shot him up to true super-prospect status. When he first debuted as the Diamondbacks’ #5 prospect ahead of the 2020 season, scouts graded Carroll’s power as only a 40 on the 20-80 grading scale, but after mashing 28 home runs across 125 total games between the minor and major leagues last season, his power grade now sits at a 55 according to MLB Pipeline scouts. In addition to his power improvements, all of the tools that scouts thought would lead to an elite leadoff hitter and defensive outfielder are still there for Carroll. To go along with his great contact skills, he showed impressive plate discipline, posting a 15.2% walk rate across the minor leagues last season. Additionally, upon reaching the majors last year, Caroll put up impressive Statcast numbers as well, with a 30.7 ft/s sprint speed that was the fastest of any MLB player last season, along with 5 outs above average in only 225.1 innings of work in the outfield.
Clearly, Arizona knows the level of prospect they have on their hands, as they locked him up with an eight-year, $111 million contract extension on March 11. As the Diamondbacks look to build one of the strongest young outfields in the league, featuring former top-20 prospect, Alek Thomas; last year’s fourth-place finisher for NL Rookie of the Year, Jake McCarthy; and the #2 overall pick from the 2022 draft, Druw Jones; it still looks like Corbin Carroll will be the scariest thing that opposing teams see when they head to the desert over the next decade.
Runner Up: Jordan Walker - OF, Cardinals
Dark Horse: Sal Frelick - OF, Brewers
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