Aaron Judge won the American League MVP Award last night, defeating last year’s MVP in Shohei Ohtani and Houston Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez.
Ohtani, the Los Angeles Angels two-way superstar, finished second in the voting, receiving two first-place votes and 28 votes for second place.
Judge won by receiving 22 first-place votes.
So while the vast majority of the writers voted for Judge, Ohtani did receive a fair amount of support from other writers.
According to Angels insider Jeff Fletcher, the two writers who gave Ohtani their first-place votes were Sam Blum of The Athletic and Greg Beacham of the Associated Press.
Shohei Ohtani got 2 first place votes, and he was 2nd on the other 28 ballots.
LA writers Sam Blum (The Athletic) and Greg Beacham (AP) voted for Ohtani. https://t.co/DRtPDJ0lY2
—Jeff Fletcher (@JeffFletcherOCR) November 18, 2022
Ohtani Receives Two First-Place Votes
Ohtani certainly put together yet another MVP-caliber season.
While it wasn’t enough to prevent Judge from winning his award, it was still an impressive season.
The slugger hit .273 with 34 home runs and 95 RBI during the regular season.
On the mound, he started 28 games and posted a 2.33 ERA with a 15-9 record.
Ohtani was a deserving candidate for sure, but Judge’s 62 home runs, which broke an American League single-season record, were simply too much to overcome.
Still, the two-way phenom earned the right to at least be considered for the award after following up his MVP season from a year ago with another solid performance, which might have earned him the award in any other season.
But there were at least a few writers who thought that Ohtani could have been given the award for a second straight season.
