Aaron Judge is your 2025 American League MVP. He narrowly beat out the Mariners’ all-world catcher Cal Raleigh to win the award for the third time in his career and the third time in the last four seasons,
the others coming in 2022 and 2024. In winning the award for the third time, he joined the illustrious group of Jimmie Foxx, Stan Musial, Roy Campanella, Mike Schmidt, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, and three-time Yankees MVPs Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle. Judge trails only Shohei Ohtani and Barry Bonds for most wins all time. He became first player in the AL to defend his MVP crown since Miguel Cabrera scored consecutive wins in 2013 and 2014.
Judge led all of MLB with 10.1 fWAR and won the first batting title of his career, pacing the league with a .331 average. His 53 home runs marked the fourth time in his career he has breached the 50 home run mark, joining Babe Ruth, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa as the only players in MLB history to achieve the feat. In fact, he led the AL in pretty much every offensive category including on-base, slugging, total bases, and Win Probability Added. His 204 wRC+ means he was over 100 percent more productive than the average MLB hitter, with the next-highest mark belonging to Ohtani at 172. It’s a level of production that is hard to compute even as we watched it with our own eyes every game.
Judge just nipped ahead of Raleigh to win the award, finishing with 17 first-place votes to Raleigh’s 13. It was a far closer race than when Judge won unanimously in 2024 and properly reflects the astonishing season turned in by the Mariners’ backstop. Raleigh became the first primary catcher and first switch hitter to slug 60 home runs in a season, just the fourth time that an AL hitter has hit 60 home runs in a season, joining Ruth, Roger Maris, and Judge. To go along with his stellar defense behind the plate, Raleigh accrued 9.1 fWAR, second among position players behind Judge. Raleigh’s performance would have merited winning the award in pretty much any other season had his primary competition not been the greatest right-handed hitter in history, and a massive tip of the cap from all of us goes out to his stellar campaign.
As indicated above, Cody Bellinger was the only other Yankee to receive down-ballot votes, earning a seventh, eighth, and tenth place vote to finish 14th. It’s the 2019 NL MVP’s best finish in the voting since placing 10th in 2023 and reflects an impressive walk year performance that should earn him a lucrative contract in free agency — be it from New York or someone else.
Over on the Senior Circuit, Shohei Ohtani was voted as the unanimous NL MVP. He became the second player in MLB history to win the award four times, now trailing only seven-time winner Barry Bonds. Ohtani has been voted the unanimous NL MVP in each of his first two seasons with the Dodgers, and this is the third straight season he wins’s won an MVP, also taking home the prize in his final season with the Angels in 2023 (Judge’s 62-homer ‘22 was seemingly his only obstacle to five consecutive MVPs). This year, Ohtani trailed only Judge with 9.4 cumulative fWAR between hitting and pitching, though his 7.5 fWAR as a position player placed fourth in MLB behind Judge, Raleigh, and Bobby Witt Jr. Phillies masher Kyle Schwarber finished riunner-up and erstwhile Judge teammate Juan Soto was third in the Senior Circuit voting.
Congrats again to the Captain!
