Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across Major League Baseball. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in New York Yankees fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
We are on the brink of the home stretch in the 2025 MLB season, and in addition to all the playoff hullabaloo, fans have their eyes on the races for potential awards. Yankees captain Aaron Judge is eyeing his third AL MVP win in four years, but while he seemed
to have it almost locked it up at midseason after flirting with .400 early on, a couple factors have made it so that this race will come down to the wire.
The first is Judge’s elbow injury, which sent him to the IL for 10 days in late July and early August. The flexor strain affects his ability to throw, and the Yankees are playing it safe with their superstar by restricting him to DH duty until the medical staff clears him to return to the outfield. As it currently stands, he hasn’t played the field for over a month, and although he has heated up again this week, he had a more pedestrian .775 OPS for August as he tried to find his timing following his return from the IL.
The second factor? Seattle’s Cal Raleigh might very well be having the best season ever recorded by a catcher in MLB history. 2025 has been the Year of the Big Dumper, as Raleigh made his first All-Star team, won the Home Run Derby in Atlanta, and set a new high-water mark for homers by a backstop. Yes, we’re not even in September yet and Raleigh has broken Salvador Perez’s record for homers by a catcher, reaching his present total of 50 on August 25th. A run at Judge’s 2022 American League record of 62 homers can’t entirely be ruled out, and Yankees legend Mickey Mantle’s single-season record for a switch-hitter (54) is all but doomed to fall by the wayside. It is remarkable to see a catcher — and one who won the Platinum Glove last year as a defensive standout, too — get into this many games and not wear down over the course of the long season (even with some DH time of his own mixed in).
With Raleigh breaking Perez’s mark this past week , MLB fans are impressed and thus consider him the new AL MVP favorite over Judge, per the latest league-wide Reacts poll:
We still have a full month to go though, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that Judge is outhitting Raleigh even with his time off and all those Raleigh rockets.
Judge is hitting .323/.439/.668, on pace to win his first career AL batting crown (the first in a full season by a Yankee since Bernie Williams in 1998) with 41 bombs, a 193 wRC+, and 7.5 fWAR in 124 games. Raleigh’s incredible, but he’s also just a less complete hitter, currently batting .244/.351/.587 with the aforementioned 50 dingers leading to a 158 wRC+ though an essentially identical 7.3 fWAR in 131 games. This isn’t really a dig at Cal; there are few players in modern history who are as complete a hitter as Judge. Now, defense is obviously a key component here too, and though Judge is a good right fielder when healthy, Raleigh’s an excellent catcher and that would be inherently more valuable even if Judge wasn’t stuck on DH duty at the moment. Both the Yankees and Mariners are in tight races for playoff spots, though Seattle carries extra sentiment since the Mariners have made it to October just once in the past 24 seasons.
Again, one hot September could decide this race, and there will be plenty of time for a more thorough debate once the final numbers are in the books. Stay tuned.
Much of this article was devoted to the AL MVP race since we had national poll results there, but we did pose a Yankees-specific question, too! It focused on the bullpen, which has been a problem point for the Yanks this year. Here are the results for the most trusted current reliever:
It’s another tight race, but 2024 playoff closer Luke Weaver has the slight edge for the plurality of 39 percent over the 32 percent accrued by Trade Deadline acquisition David Bednar, who has stepped into the role following offseason addition Devin Williams’ demotion. Both Weaver and Bednar have had shaky points in 2025 though, so 29 percent went third party and said that they didn’t trust either (others in the comments said that lefty Tim Hill would’ve been their pick if he was an option).
Fair enough! Levels of trust are inherently different from person to person, so you can only feel how you feel. No matter what, we’ll all be hoping for multiple members of the Yankees bullpen to round into form in September, as nothing will drive fans mad faster than shoddy performances late in ballgames with everything on the line.
These survey results are sponsored by FanDuel.
