Bradford DoolittleNov 10, 2025, 07:00 AM ETCloseMLB writer and analyst for ESPN.com Former NBA writer and analyst for ESPN.com Been with ESPN since 2013
Dodgers thank fans, turn attention to WS three-peat (0:52)The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw address the fans following a parade celebrating their World Series victory. (0:52)
The hot stove season is already burning, but even amid the jostling of 2026 rosters, we’ve one last bit of 2025 business: handing out the major awards.
The biggies are the four major honors determined by BBWAA voting. These are the ones that will generate the most future attention in baseball history books and on Hall of Fame résumés of the future. The schedule (awards will be announced starting at 7 p.m. ET each night on MLB Network):
Today: Jackie Robinson Rookies of the Year Tuesday: Managers of the Year Wednesday: Cy Young Awards Thursday: MVP Awards
In addition, MLB will hold its annual awards show in Las Vegas on Thursday, during which it will recognize its All-MLB squads, the Hank Aaron Awards for each league’s best offensive performer, the Comeback Player of the Year Awards, the Mariano Rivera/Trevor Hoffman Awards for the top relievers, and the Edgar Martinez Awards for best designated hitters. The Executive of the Year Award will also be announced.
I’ll be reacting to each night’s awards announcement throughout the week, but in the meantime, here are some opening comments, as well as some brief reaction to the honors that have already been doled out.
What to know: We’re going to dive deep into the riveting race between Judge and Raleigh later this week. According to my AXE rating, which is an index that expresses the consensus of the leading bottom-line metrics, the winner is Judge (164 to 150) and it’s not particularly close.
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-worthy. But despite another historic season from Judge, I’m going with Raleigh.
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.
Finally, poor Jose Ramirez. This is Ramirez’s sixth time landing in the AL’s top five in MVP balloting, and eighth time in the top 10. But he’s not going to win. Ramirez just keeps churning out the same great season every year. It’s just that there has always been someone a little greater each season.
What to know: Together, the three NL MVP finalists logged 63% of their starts at designated hitter. Most of the non-DH starts came from Soto, whose defensive metrics continue to suggest a future of increased DH time. Still, the days of DHs being locked out of the MVP chase are clearly over.
Ohtani was the first exclusive DH to win an MVP last year, though he’d won it before while serving as an every-day DH in addition to pitching. He logged 1.1 bWAR this season for his 47 innings on the mound, which could have proved to be a tiebreaker if he and the other finalists were close. But it’s Ohtani all the way.
As hitters, all three used up a similar number of outs as Ohtani, who had at least a 20-run advantage in runs created over both. Shockingly, it was Soto who had the best baserunning numbers, thanks to his 38-steal breakout and Ohtani deemphasizing that part of his game. But Ohtani provided easily the most defensive value with his pitching, while Soto’s defense was a negative and Schwarber was almost exclusively a DH.
Basically, everything Schwarber and Soto did, Ohtani did better — and he pitched well. Even Schwarber’s league-leading RBI count (132) is trumped by Ohtani’s decided edge in WPA, a category in which he led the league. It’s Ohtani’s award, again, and it will be No. 4 for him. Only Barry Bonds has won more.
Not for nothing, you know which position player posted the highest bWAR total? That would be a nonfinalist: Arizona’s Geraldo Perdomo (7.0 bWAR), though he did finish behind Ohtani when the latter’s pitching bWAR is added.
‘He turned his back on us’: What it was like watching Soto’s Bronx return with the Bleacher Creatures
Skubal is well positioned to become the AL’s first repeat Cy Young winner since Pedro Martinez in 2000. He might just be getting started. The dominant lefty didn’t repeat as a pitching Triple Crown winner, but he posted a lower ERA (2.21 to 2.39) and struck out more batters (241 to 228) than he did while winning the Cy Young Award in 2024. For the second straight year, he led the AL in pitching bWAR, FIP and ERA+.
Brown is a worthy No. 3, but for him, it’s the same story: He hung with the Big 2 in most areas, but didn’t top them. Still, it was another season of improvement for Brown, whose ERA over the past three seasons has gone from 5.09 to 3.49 to 2.43.
Cristopher Sanchez, Philadelphia Phillies Paul Skenes, Pittsburgh Pirates Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Los Angeles Dodgers
Regardless of the third finalist, during the regular season, Skenes and Sanchez gradually separated themselves from the pack, especially after Sanchez’s teammate Zack Wheeler was injured. They are the easy top two but picking between them isn’t that easy.
Sanchez has the edge in volume — 202 innings to 187⅔, in part because the Pirates eased up on Skenes toward the end. Indeed, failure to do so would have been malpractice. Despite that, Skenes struck out more batters (216 to 212), posted a better ERA (1.97 to 2.50) and led the league in ERA+, WHIP and FIP. The extra 14⅓ innings allowed Sanchez a narrow win in bWAR (8.0 to 7.7).
In the end, their runs saved against average is a virtual dead heat: 53 for Sanchez against 52 for Skenes. Thus for me it comes down to context. Sanchez put up his season for a division champ; Skenes for a cellar dweller. That is not Skenes’ fault, but we’ve got to separate these pitchers somehow. Sanchez’s season was worth 3.2% championship probability added against Skenes’ 0.5%. That’s the clincher for me.
Kurtz wins this one in an AXE rout and, presumably, will do the same in the voting. It might have been different had Anthony’s season not ended on Sept. 2 because of an oblique injury, but that’s what happened.
Quick sidebar: I know everybody love’s Kurtz’s Big Amish nickname, but can’t we go with Colonel? Because Colonel Kurtz promises to be a horror for pitchers for a long time to come.
The NL rookie race is somewhat less dynamic than it was in 2024 when the finalists were Skenes, Jackson Merrill and Jackson Chourio. The 2025 race was such a hodgepodge all season that, in the end, it feels almost miraculous that AXE agrees with the voters’ selection of the three finalists.
As an excellent-hitting rookie who got into 97 games as a catcher, Baldwin has the clearest case for the award. Durbin was a spark plug for the Brewers who does a little bit of everything, but he was roughly a league-average hitter. Horton was excellent for the Cubs but logged only 118 innings.
Baldwin caught, played 124 games and put up a 126 OPS+ while driving in 80 runs. That’s enough separation for me.
This would make Murphy 2-for-2 in winning the award as a full-time big league manager, a position he didn’t ascend to until age 65. (I’m discounting his 96-game interim stint for San Diego in 2015.)
Yes, the Brewers repeated as a playoff team, but this was still a squad that entered the season with low expectations after the roster was shuffled into an even younger version. Rather than this being a transition season, the Brewers were one of baseball’s most exciting units. They won close games, won with rookies and won with a relatively low payroll. And they had a tremendous clubhouse culture
It’s a combination of factors that should enable Murphy to repeat, especially because the voters didn’t know Milwaukee would eventually be flattened by the Dodgers in the NLCS.
Just a run-through of my picks, leaving aside the Comeback Player category, which is tough to attack analytically:
Executive of the Year: Matt Arnold, Milwaukee Brewers. I have a metric I use to track organizational performance. It looks at things like the performance of acquired players, organizational records and the value produced by rookies. Arnold’s club topped the charts. Arnold won this award last year, so we’ll find out if there is an Arnold fatigue at work here. If Arnold doesn’t win, I’d lean toward Seattle’s Jerry Dipoto.
Gold Gloves: The winners have been announced and can be found here. My quibbles: I would have gone with Toronto’s Alejandro Kirk at AL catcher over Detroit’s Dillon Dingler. On the NL side, I’d have liked to find a spot for Washington’s Jacob Young, but the insistence on LF/CF/RF distinctions ruled that out. All in all, another pretty solid job in an awards category that used to be rife with absurdities.
Dodgers thank fans, turn attention to WS three-peat (0:52)The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw address the fans following a parade celebrating their World Series victory. (0:52)
The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw address the fans following a parade celebrating their World Series victory. (0:52)
CloseMLB writer and analyst for ESPN.com Former NBA writer and analyst for ESPN.com Been with ESPN since 2013
Jump to: MVP: AL | NL Cy Young: AL | NL Rookie of the Year: AL | NL Manager of the Year: AL | NL
Aaron Judge, New York Yankees Cal Raleigh, Seattle Mariners Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Guardians
That being said: Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. should have been the third finalist. He’ll be back.
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Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Dodgers Kyle Schwarber, Philadelphia Phillies Juan Soto, New York Mets