While we've come to expect the giants of the game like Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge to have full trophy cases, Carlos Cortes and Ildemaro Vargas proved that you don't have to be household names to nab the hardware by taking home the latest AL and NL Player of the Week Awards.
In a lineup full of burgeoning stars like Nick Kurtz and Jacob Wilson, it was the lefty-hitting outfielder Cortes who did the heavy lifting for the Athletics last week. He went 13-for-24 (.542) with two doubles, a triple, three homers and seven RBIs in helping the A's to take four out of six games in series wins vs. the NL West rival Mariners and Rangers. Cortes, 28, entered the week with just one homer and six RBIs in 16 games this season.
This was the first Player of the Week Award for Cortes and the first for an A's player since Kurtz won in back-to-back weeks last summer (July 21, July 28).
Vargas, 34, made the most of his five games started last week for the D-backs, going 8-for-22 (.364) with a double, a triple, four home runs, 12 RBIs and seven runs scored, tripling his homer output for the season. A 10-year big league vet who has never posted a full-season WAR above 1.5, Vargas currently leads the NL with a .367 batting average, .722 slugging percentage and 1.104 OPS and has hit safely in each of the 20 games he's played this season.
This was also the first Player of the Week honors for Vargas, and the first for Arizona since Eugenio Suárez won for the fourth time in '25 on July 21.
Cubs second baseman Nico Hoerner, who won the NL Player of the Week Award just last week, checks in with this week's best defensive play. After Hyeseong Kim smoked a grounder off the glove of first baseman Michael Busch, Hoerner made a jumping, barehanded play on the deflection to get the out at first.
Hoerner is the fourth Cubs player to earn Play of the Week honors since the award's inception in 2019, and the first since Mike Tauchman on July 30, 2023.