Alex Rodriguez explains why the Dodgers are good for baseball
USA TODAY’s Ralphie Aversa chats with MLB legend Alex Rodriguez about the dominant nature of the Dodgers roster.
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Soon enough, Shohei Ohtani won’t have anyone but Barry Bonds to chase.
Ohtani is expected to earn his fourth Most Valuable Player award Nov. 13 when balloting from the Baseball Writers’ Assn. is announced. It would be his second National League honor with the Los Angeles Dodgers after winning a pair of American League MVPs down the freeway with the Angels.
Ohtani’s fourth MVP would break a tie with 10 players who were three-time MVPs, and move him behind only Barry Bonds, whose seven NL MVPs are most in Major League Baseball history.
In the AL, Aaron Judge is aiming to join the Gang of Three with his third MVP plaque, though record-setting Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh is a significant roadblock. Judge hit 53 home runs and won his first career batting title, leading the majors with a .331 mark. Raleigh hit 60 home runs, a record for both a catcher and switch-hitter, and drove in 125.
Major League Baseball will reveal the 2025 Most Valuable Player winners at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 13.
How to watch MLB MVP announcement show
The MLB MVP award show will air on MLB Network and can be streamed with Fubo.
American League
National League
- .247 average, .359 OBP, .589 slugging, .948 OPS
- 60 home runs, 125 RBIs
Raleigh’s MVP bid, Judge backers might say, put another dent into the value of batting average: The Big Dumper’s .247 mark was lowest in major league history for a non-pitcher, and couldn’t quite reach the two-way great Ohtani’s .257 mark when he won in 2021. And it rubs it in a little more when Judge posted the majors’ best batting average this season – .331.
But is Raleigh simply a product of his offensive environment?
His .247 average remains above the league average of .245, a number that’s been at historic lows for the better part of a decade. And that’s true of any MVP whose average dipped below, say, a more appropriate .275 mark, say.
In his 1961 MVP season, Roger Maris batted just .269 – nine points above the majors-wide mark of .258. Something about hitting 61 home runs quieted the buzz around his unappealing batting average.
Raleigh banked on his 60 bombs having a similar effect in 2025.
- .331 average (AL batting champion), .457 OBP, .688 slugging, 1.145 OPS
- 53 home runs, 114 RBIs
Batting
- .282 average, .392 OBP, .622 slugging, 1.014 OPS
- 55 home runs, 102 RBIs, 20 stolen bases
Pitching
- 2.87 ERA in 47 innings (14 starts)
- 62 strikeouts, 11.87 K/9
Ohtani’s MVP seasons are wildly distinct, appropriate given his vast skill set. In 2024, he won his first NL MVP with an unprecedented 54-homer, 59-stolen base campaign. A year later, he ran less – but made a triumphant return to the pitching mound.
Indeed, he stole “just” 20 bases yet boosted his career high in homers to 55 and, after the Dodgers slow-played his pitching rehab, ramped up from opener to multi-inning guy to, by season’s end, a full-fledged starter who was crucial to the Dodgers’ postseason hopes on both sides of the ball.
In a sense, this MVP campaign was a hybrid of Ohtani’s first two MVP seasons in 2021 and 2023– when he hit 46 and 44 home runs and pitched 130 ⅓ and 132 innings with ERAs of 2.33 and 3.14, respectively. But the latter season ended early on the pitching side, as Ohtani needed another elbow reconstruction surgery after the year, preceding his signing with the Dodgers.
This time around, he pitched less but belted more home runs, the Ohtani formula ever-shifting.
- 2024: Aaron Judge (Yankees) and Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers)
- 2023: Shohei Ohtani (Angels) and Ronald Acuña Jr. (Braves)
- 2022: Aaron Judge (Yankees) and Paul Goldschmidt (Cardinals)
- 2021: Shohei Ohtani (Angels) and Bryce Harper (Phillies)
- 2020: Jose Abreu (White Sox) and Freddie Freeman (Braves)
- 2019: Mike Trout (Angels) and Cody Bellinger (Dodgers)
- 2018: Mookie Betts (Red Sox) and Christian Yelich (Brewers)
- 2017: Jose Altuve (Astros) and Giancarlo Stanton (Marlins)
- 2016: Mike Trout (Angels) and Kris Bryant (Cubs)
- 2015: Josh Donaldson (Blue Jays) and Bryce Harper (Nationals)
Members of the Baseball Writers Association of America vote for the MVP awards, with 30 voters each ranking 10 players.
A first-place vote equals 14 points, second place gets nine, third receives eight points and all the way down through a 10th-place vote receiving one point.
