LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers have already secured the hardware they were fighting for all season -- another World Series trophy -- but a couple of them are in the running for individual honors as well.
Shohei Ohtani was named a finalist for the NL Most Valuable Player Award and Yoshinobu Yamamoto was named a finalist for the NL Cy Young Award, as voted on by the Baseball Writers' Association of America and announced on Monday night on MLB Network.
BBWAA awards are voted on before the postseason begins, so only regular-season performance is taken into account. The winners will be announced during the week of Nov. 10 --- Cy Young on Nov. 12 and MVP on Nov. 13 -- on MLB Network in shows beginning at 4 p.m. PT.
Ohtani is a favorite to win his third straight MVP Award and his fourth overall. The other finalists are the Phillies' Kyle Schwarber and the Mets' Juan Soto.
In his second season as a Dodger, Ohtani hit a career-high 55 homers and batted .282 with an NL-leading 1.014 OPS. He also led the NL with a 179 OPS+, meaning he was 79 percent better than league average.
Not only did he have another excellent season at the plate, he returned to the mound midway through the season and was back to being a fully actualized two-way superstar. In a regimented return to pitching from a second major elbow surgery, Ohtani went 1-1 with a 2.87 ERA across 14 starts (47 innings). He struck out 62 against nine walks and posted a 145 ERA+.
Between his two-way duties, Ohtani also ranked among the top players in the Majors on both WAR leaderboards: second overall with 9.4, according to FanGraphs, and third with 7.7, according to Baseball Reference.
Yamamoto is a Cy Young finalist for the first time, although he won the Nippon Professional Baseball equivalent -- the Eiji Sawamura Award -- three times before coming to the Majors. The favorite in this category is the Pirates' Paul Skenes; the Phillies' Cristopher Sánchez rounds out the group.
In his sophomore season, Yamamoto showed exactly why the Dodgers signed him to a 12-year, $325 million contract before he had thrown a pitch in the Majors. The 27-year-old right-hander went 12-8 with a 2.49 ERA, struck out 201 batters against 59 walks in 173 2/3 innings and held opponents to a .183 average, the lowest mark in the Majors.
Yamamoto ranked among the top pitchers in the NL -- and the Majors at large -- in several statistical categories, but his greatest value for the Dodgers came in his ability to stay on the field for the entire season. He was the only member of the rotation who did not miss a start all year, anchoring a pitching staff that once again dealt with a lot of injuries.