Angels’ Shohei Ohtani finishes 2nd to Yankees’ Aaron Judge for AL MVP
Ohtani #Ohtani
There was no repeat for Shohei Ohtani.
Although Ohtani said he believed his 2022 season was better than the one that earned him a unanimous American League MVP Award in 2021, he came up well short of New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge this time.
Judge, who set a league record with 62 home runs and made a run at the Triple Crown, won the award by taking 28 of 30 first-place votes.
Ohtani received the other two first-place votes, and he was listed second on the other 28 ballots. The Houston Astros’ Yordan Alvarez finished third (22 third-place votes).
Angels beat writer Sam Blum, of The Athletic, and L.A.-based Associated Press writer Greg Beacham were the only two voters to pick Ohtani.
There are two voters representing each of the 15 cities in the AL, with votes tabulated on a system that rewards 14 points for first place, nine for second, eight for third on down to one for 10th.
The case for Ohtani was simply that he performed as a two-way player at a level not seen by anyone else since Babe Ruth more than 100 years ago.
On the mound, Ohtani was 15-9 with a 2.33 ERA and a league-leading 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings, improving on last year’s totals in each category. He finished fourth in the AL Cy Young Award vote.
At the plate, Ohtani’s performance was slightly down from 2021. He hit .273 with 34 homers and an .875 OPS.
Judge was the best hitter in the majors, finishing with an OPS of 1.111. He also helped the Yankees to 99 victories and a division title.
Angels center fielder Mike Trout finished eighth, returning to the leaders after the first time in his career that he didn’t finish in the top five. Trout missed most of 2021 with an injury. He missed a month in 2022, but still hit 40 homers and produced a .999 OPS.
More to come on this story.
Jeff Fletcher has covered the Angels since 2013. Before that, he spent 11 years covering the Giants and A’s and working as a national baseball writer. Jeff is a Hall of Fame voter. In 2015, he was elected chairman of the Los Angeles chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America.