As we now look back on the 2025 Yankees’ season, it’s hard to still not have a sense of frustration. As a team, they came up short of their World Series championship goal once again, going down fairly
meekly to the Blue Jays in the ALDS.
However as we continue our season in review, today we’re going to look back at some individual greatness. You can’t really argue that there were several Yankees who had really good seasons just on an individual level. With that in mind, today we’re going to award our 2025 Yankee Most Valuable Player and Yankee Cy Young Award. Spoiler alert: you’re not going to be surprised by the choices.
Most Valuable Player
Considering that he’s going to be at worst a close second for the American League MVP, you can’t give this honor to anyone but Aaron Judge.
The Yankee Captain finished his 2025 season with a .331/.457/.688 batting line, 53 home runs, 114 RBI, 124 walks, a .463 wOBA, a 204 wRC+, and 10.1 fWAR. If you go to Baseball Reference, they have a thing called “black ink,” which basically means if you go to a player’s page and there’s a stat that’s in bold typeface, it means that player led the league in that stat in whatever year. For 2025, Judge has black ink in bWAR, runs, walks, batting average, OBP, slugging, OPS, OPS+, total bases, and more. The only real reason he’s not the runaway AL MVP is because he didn’t league the lead in home runs, as Cal Raleigh had a historic season for a catcher on that front. Also, if Judge didn’t miss a bit of time with a shoulder injury, he probably would have closed the gap even further in the home run race as well.
The most notable thing about 2025 compared to Judge’s other excellent and, in some cases, MVP-winning years was that he managed to win the batting title. While the baseball environment these days means that the title-winning batting averages don’t end up at the .370 or above range like they used to, him taking that crown is remarkable considering the type of hitter Judge is. Not only is he now the tallest batting champion ever, his 53 homers are the most ever by the batting title winner.
The tone for Judge’s season was set almost immediately. In just the second game of the season, he homered three times as part of the Yankees’ barrage against the Brewers.
After that, we all should’ve known another remarkable season was coming. The Yankees still need to get him a ring at some point, but we are watching a future Hall of Famer grow his legacy right in front of our eyes. Don’t take that for granted.
Cy Young Award
After the Yankees lost out in the Juan Soto sweepstakes, their next plan was to pivot and try and fill that gap with a couple additions. The headliner of that group was pitcher Max Fried, who came over on a seven-year deal after a very nice career with the Braves. Year one of that deal went almost as well as you could ask, as Fried was the Yankees’ ace, filling a void left after Gerrit Cole needed Tommy John surgery.
Fried will finish his first season as a Yankee with a 19-5 record, a 2.86 ERA, a 3.07 FIP, and a career high 189 strikeouts. While his final start of the year went less than ideally, he was the man the Yankees turned to in Game 1 of their first playoff series, and it was absolutely deserved.
For a while at the start of the season, it seemed like Fried might be in contention for more than just a Yankees Cy Young, but the AL one as well. Through a May 2nd game where he took a no-hit bid deep into the game, Fried had a 1.01 ERA, and was still below two at the end of June.
Fried slumped a bit in July and early August, but not coincidentally that came after he left a start early due to blisters. While that run threatened to turn his season from very good into just good, he rebounded from that down the stretch. Over his final seven starts of the season, Fried posted a 1.55 ERA and struck out over a batter per inning. He followed that with 6.1 scoreless innings in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series, with plenty arguing that Aaron Boone pulled him from that game too early.
Unlike Judge where he will undoubtedly be somewhere in the top two in AL MVP voting, it’s hard to tell where Fried will end up in AL Cy Young voting, but he should be somewhere on the leaderboard. His midseason slump kept him out of legitimate consideration, but he absolutely should get some down-ballot votes.
The 2025 season did not end as we all would’ve hoped, for Judge and Fried included. Make no mistake though, they were both excellent.
