Usually, in an MLB awards race, there are two players going head-to-head with one trailing slightly behind; and in some cases, it’ll be a three-way race. That’s probably why Major League Baseball makes the top three vote-getters of each major award a big deal and only releases the top three finalists leading up to announcement day. Well, in the National League in 2023, it seems as if that norm of releasing the top three vote-getters will have to change to the top four, because for the first time in a while, we have a quartet of qualified NL MVPs out of the Senior Circuit’s two best teams.
Ronald Acuna, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Matt Olson all find themselves in a dog fight for the honor of best hitter in the National League this season while playing on the NL’s top teams: the Braves (Olson and Acuna) and the Dodgers (Freeman and Betts). I can’t remember the last time this has really happened with any MLB award, let alone any American end-of-season sporting award. I mean, seriously, all four of these guys could easily win MVP in the NL and be the face of a championship squad come November. What a year on their resume if that happens, but what a year even if it doesn’t!
I think Ronald Acuna has the best shot at the NL MVP award this year only because he’s encapsulating what the future of baseball will look like the best. Over the Braves-Dodgers weekend series, Ronny became the first hitter in baseball history to post 30 homers and 60 stolen bases in a single season, of course helped mightily by the new rules that have altered baseball forever, but that doesn’t take away from the magnitude of such a cool achievement. What would be cooler, however, is if Freddie Freeman could also go 30/60, this time with home runs and doubles. There have been 241 individual seasons in which a base-stealer has stolen 60 or more bases, but there have been only six 60-double seasons ever! For Freddie to join that group while also smacking 30 homers would be crazy, too, and I’m not sure if the record books would want to overlook that if it happens.
I wouldn’t sleep on Mookie Betts or Matt Olson, though, because both are having career years that make their mega-contracts look like rookie deals in terms of undervaluation. Betts is MLB’s current WAR leader, a stat that is usually indicative of MVP voting in all years except for this one, and is on-pace to top 40 homers for the first time in his career and post an OPS over 1.000 for the first time since his 2018 AL MVP year in Beantown. Olson, just a year and change into replacing Freeman as the Braves first baseman, is currently your NL leader in home runs and RBIs. Sure, Matty Mash is as traditional a slugger as you can get in modern baseball, but a .953 OPS ain’t shabby.
Acuna and Olson have been front-runners for MVP since April, while hot Augusts have brough the LA boys into the mix. Even if slumps or hot streaks happen, the MVP is supposed to stamp a season by embroidering it with history and magic for all to nostalgically remember in future years. The MVP is supposed to be the hitter that exemplifies the season the best, which is why, in the first year of the new rules, that Acuna deserves the honor by its arbitrary definition. However, baseball is baseball, and because of that riveting math equation, who knows what will happen? And will I be upset if Acuna doesn’t win in favor of one of his three competitors? Absolutely not, for as a wise sage once said that, yes, baseball is baseball.
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