PHILADELPHIA -- The BBWAA announced the finalists for this year’s AL and NL MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year Awards on Monday night.
Three Phillies made the cut.
Let’s look at the finalists, and their chances to win it:
NL MVP
Kyle Schwarber
Schwarber joins Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani and Mets slugger Juan Soto as finalists. Schwarber is here because he batted .240 with an NL-leading 56 home runs, an MLB-leading 132 RBIs, a .928 OPS and a 150 OPS+.
He ranked second in the NL in OPS (behind Ohtani's 1.014) and third in OPS+ (behind Ohtani's 179 and Soto's 160).
Occasionally, voters from other cities will call or send a text/email and ask what I thought about a particular Phillies player’s season. I got a few calls about Schwarber. I mentioned how indispensable he was offensively to a 96-win team.
Consider: Bryce Harper missed a month early in the season because of a wrist injury, Trea Turner missed time in September because of a hamstring injury, Alec Bohm got off to a poor start, Nick Castellanos ranked last in baseball in fWAR and bWAR, J.T. Realmuto had his worst offensive season since his rookie year, Max Kepler didn’t have the year the Phillies hoped and Brandon Marsh and Bryson Stott struggled mightily in the first half.
But Schwarber was excellent from beginning to end. The Phillies wouldn’t have won 96 games without him.
It’s why the Phillies will try to/need to re-sign him this offseason. He not only brings a ton to the plate, but he is a tremendous influence in the clubhouse and in the community.
Prediction: Ohtani wins unanimously for the fourth time (twice with the Angels, twice with the Dodgers). Schwarber finishes second. He previously finished 16th in 2022, 19th in ‘23 and 15th in ‘24.
NL CY YOUNG
Cristopher Sánchez
The Phillies suffered a massive blow in August, when Zack Wheeler developed a season-ending blood clot near his right shoulder. It required surgery.
But the Phils were as well positioned as anybody to handle a loss like that because they had Sánchez, who has developed into one of the game’s best pitchers. Sánchez went 13-5 with a 2.50 ERA in 32 starts this season. He struck out a career-high 212 and walked 44 in a career-high 202 innings. He led MLB with 8.0 bWAR. He finished second in the NL with 6.4 fWAR.
Sánchez – who joins Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes and Los Angeles’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto as finalists – is fun to watch, particularly when his changeup is diving. Opponents batted .170 against it, which ranked 11th out of 96 pitchers (minimum 250 changeups thrown). They whiffed at it 45.1 percent of the time, which ranked second only to Tarik Skubal (minimum 250 swings at a changeup). Sánchez struck out 130 batters on his changeup to lead baseball.
No other pitcher in baseball struck out more batters on single offspeed pitch or breaking ball than Sánchez’s changeup.
Prediction: Skenes wins unanimously. It’s just impossible to get past a 1.97 ERA in 32 starts. Sánchez finishes second after finishing 10th in 2024.
NL MANAGER OF THE YEAR
Rob Thomson
Manager of the Year is an interesting vote every year because there is no real way to quantify what a manager does.
It’s more than just wins and losses.
Typically, the award goes to managers from teams who exceeded relatively low expectations. That’s probably why Cincinnati’s Terry Francona and Milwaukee’s Pat Murphy are finalists.
Francona guided the Reds to 83 wins and the third NL Wild Card. It was Cincinnati’s first postseason appearance in a non-pandemic year since 2013. Murphy not only replaced Craig Counsell as manager, but he guided a team that did almost nothing in the offseason to 97 wins and the best record in baseball.
Thomson is a bit of an outlier here. The Phillies had a top-five payroll and entered the season with World Series expectations. But he gets credit for easily winning the NL East, which should have been far more challenging than it was.
Prediction: Thomson finishes third to Murphy and Francona.