Barring an ultra-rare tie, a deserving Most Valuable Player candidate in the American League was going to come away empty-handed Thursday night.
Such was the reality of a year in which both Yankees captain Aaron Judge and Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh had legitimate statistical and narrative claims to the MVP. And in results revealed on MLB Network, it was the AL winner Judge joining the obvious and anticipated National League winner Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers in capturing the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s most prized individual honors.
The two-way Ohtani was a unanimous winner for his third straight MVP (two straight in the NL) and fourth in the last five years. Only Barry Bonds (seven) has more MVPs, and Bonds (2001-04) was the only previous player to win three in a row. No other player in history has been voted MVP unanimously multiple times; Ohtani has been unanimous every time.
“The biggest thing,” Ohtani said through an interpreter of this 2025 win, “is obviously being able to win the World Series. That's first and foremost. You know, it's icing on the cake to be able to get an individual award, being crowned MVP, but I just really appreciate the support from all my teammates, everybody around me, my supporting staff.”
In the AL, the vote was predictably closer.
Judge, the rare batting champ with 50-plus home runs, received 17 first-place votes to Raleigh’s 13 (355 to 335 in the overall tally) to win his second straight AL MVP and third in the last four years.
“I always would joke around with my parents in the backyard or when I was playing Little League that one day I would get a chance to be in the Major Leagues,” Judge said. “I never thought it'd be something like this. It’s just truly incredible. Always chase your dreams.”
This is the first time in the history of the award that both MVPs from one season repeated the next.
So the vote made it more clear than ever that this is the era of Ohtani and Judge, who in different ways have placed their names among the greatest to ever play the game.
But even sans hardware, this AL MVP race -- probably the most fiercely debated in the public sphere since Miguel Cabrera vs. Mike Trout in the AL back in 2012 -- was an opportunity to appreciate the history Raleigh made in one of the greatest seasons one could ever conceive for a catcher.
Already regarded as one of the best defensive catchers in the game (Raleigh was not only a Gold Glove winner but also the AL’s Platinum Glove winner as the best overall defender in the league in 2024), Raleigh continued to provide value behind the dish (87th percentile in fielding run value, per Statcast, and the eighth-highest defensive rating of any player at any position, per FanGraphs) to go with a truly extraordinary year at the dish.
Raleigh became the seventh player ever with a 60-homer season, and those 60 homers were the most ever by a catcher, a switch-hitter and a Mariners player. Raleigh also drove in an AL-best 125 runs and was lauded for his work with the pitching staff on a Seattle team that won its division (and wound up advancing to the ALCS after voting had concluded) for the first time since 2001.
All of the above was special. But the BBWAA balloters recognized that what Judge did (plenty more on this below) was special, too. And any claims of potential “voter fatigue” were rendered moot by the actual results.
As for Ohtani, well, his case wasn’t a difficult sell. After becoming the first player with a 50-homer, 50-steal season in 2024, Ohtani toned down his baserunning brilliance in 2025 only because he needed that energy for his return to the mound following major elbow surgery. Ohtani’s performance as a designated hitter alone might have been enough to earn him MVP; his added pitching contributions to the eventual World Series champion Dodgers made his case irrefutable.
Ohtani finished ahead of Phillies designated hitter Kyle Schwarber and Mets free-agent acquisition Juan Soto. The third-place finisher in the AL was Guardians cornerstone José Ramírez, a finalist for the fourth time in his career.
Here’s more on the MVP winners:
AL MVP Award winner: Aaron Judge, Yankees
Continuing what may well be the greatest peak by a right-handed hitter in MLB history, Judge’s offensive case proved impossible for the MVP voters to deny.
Already in possession of the highest single-season AL home run total (62, in 2022) and the highest single-season OPS+ by an AL or NL right-handed hitter in the Modern Era (223, in 2024), Judge achieved a different degree of excellence in 2025 by leading his league (and all of MLB, in fact) in batting average (.331) while hitting 50 homers.
The only other players in history to do that were Hall of Famers Jimmie Foxx (1938) and Mickey Mantle (1956).
“Coming up through my Minor League and then Major League career, it was kind of about, ‘This is a bigger guy that just hits for power,’” Judge said. “So I just want to try to kind of round out my game and just kind of get on base for my teammates behind me and just try to be as productive as I can.”
Judge’s exact total of 53 homers was the highest ever by a batting champ.
Oh, and the 33-year-old Judge also led the Majors in on-base percentage (.457) and slugging percentage (.688) – a sort of modern “Triple Crown.”
In the most closely calculated of pro sports, Judge had numbers that didn’t need nuance. In this way, he had an easier-to-articulate MVP case than Raleigh, given that catching value can still be difficult to accurately nail down. Judge’s OPS (1.144) was nearly 200 points higher than that of Raleigh (.948), and that obviously held sway over the voters.
That Judge played through an elbow issue that cost him some time only added to how impressive his overall numbers were.
“I think the biggest thing for me with the elbow, you're gripping the bat, you're trying to follow through on tough pitches,” Judge said. “So it was a challenge, but everybody deals with stuff throughout the year. You could probably ask Cal the same thing. His body was probably banged up all sorts of different ways. So, you know, you just got to suck it up and go out there and play.”
So now the 6-foot-7 Judge, already the tallest player ever to win an MVP, is climbing the all-time list. Beyond Bonds and Ohtani, the only other players with at least three MVPs since BBWAA voting began in 1931 are Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Schmidt, Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio and Foxx (all with three). Judge also became the 15th player to win the MVP in back-to-back years.
The Yankees, meanwhile, added to their record total of 23 MVP seasons. Judge joined Mantle, Berra and DiMaggio as the only players to win the MVP three times with the game’s most decorated franchise -- just another way of articulating the big man’s big place in the sport.
NL MVP Award winner: Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers
No one in baseball is capable of providing the volume of value that Ohtani can when he’s healthy enough to pitch the ball while also bashing it, and now he’s got more hardware to show for it. Ohtani joined Roger Maris (1960-61 Yankees) as the only players to win the MVP in each of their first two seasons with a team and Joe Morgan (1975-76 Reds) as the only players to win both an MVP and the World Series in consecutive seasons.
As a hitter, Ohtani spent his age-30 season slashing .282/.392/.622 with a career-high 55 homers to go with 25 doubles, a career-high nine triples and 102 RBIs. He scored an MLB-high 146 runs, and both his OPS (1.014) and OPS+ (179) and his 380 total bases were the most in MLB.
That alone might have been enough to give Ohtani the edge over Soto and Schwarber, both of whom join him as position players whose MVP cases were derived entirely by their offensive contributions.
But of course, Ohtani pitched, too.
On June 16, the two-way wonder made his much-anticipated return to the hill for the first time since Aug. 23, 2023, with the Angels. Following the second major elbow surgery of his MLB career, Ohtani essentially rehabbed his arm in big league games and had to be eased into a starter’s workload. Yet he ultimately amplified an injury-riddled Dodgers rotation. All told, he put up a 2.87 ERA and 145 ERA+ (45% better than league average) in 47 innings across 14 starts, striking out 62 and walking nine.
“I think the biggest concern for me, the biggest kind of problem I experienced was towards the beginning of the season, I was coming off of surgery and I had a little bit of tightness around my left shoulder,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “So as soon as the season progressed, my shoulder got a lot looser and things got a lot easier for me to get back into my routine, control of my time management. Basically, from there on, it was smooth sailing.”
Ohtani’s combined 9.4 FanGraphs WAR was tops in the NL.
Though it didn’t factor into voting that took place at the conclusion of the regular season, Ohtani’s postseason further put him in his own category of baseball achievement. A three-homer game in which he also threw six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts in the NL pennant-clincher against the Brewers in Game 4 of the NLCS has an argument for the greatest individual performance ever. A 4-for-4, two-homer, two-double game in which he reached base nine times total in 18 innings in a Game 3 win over the Blue Jays in the World Series goes down as one of the greatest offensive performances in the history of the Fall Classic.
With his body of work as a two-way player, Ohtani has had an unparalleled MLB career, and he has greatly broadened the league’s cultural impact both stateside and abroad. The MVP has become par for his unprecedented course.
“It was a great year,” said Ohtani, who also became a father in 2025. “Like I said, I'm very grateful to my teammates, the coaching staff. But not only them, the fans, you know, the fans were the ones who really rooted us on and supported us. I think after I retire and I do look back at these special years, I can definitely say the fans played a big part in the support.”