Ricky Chek
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As the regular season awards start to wind down, the league handed out one of the most coveted awards for a player, the MVP awards.
In the National League, Washington Nationals outfielder, Bryce Harper took home the award and it wasn’t even close. Harper unanimously won the award receiving all 30 first place votes. The young outfielder was not only the youngest player to ever win the MVP unanimously but was also the third youngest to even win it on the NL side. If that wasn’t enough first for you, here is another, Harper is the first to win it in franchise history. The closest to that claim was Montreal Expo, Andre Dawson who finished second in the voting just twice. Bryce deservedly won the MVP hitting .330 to go with his league leading 42 home runs and 118 runs scored. Just a little food for thought and to put things in perspective for you, Kris Bryant won the Rookie of the year honors just a few days ago, Harper is a year and 19 days younger than he is. Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto rounded out the top three in the ballot.
The American League’s version wasn’t a clean sweep as it was for Harper but, Josh Donaldson of the Blue Jays took home the trophy with 23 of the 30 possible first place votes beating out Mike Trout. When compared side-by-side, Donaldson had more home runs, RBIs, OPS and, OBP. The Blue Jays third baseman also led the league in extra-base hit with 84. Donaldson’s biggest argument over Trout was most likely the impact he had on Toronto’s first division title since 1993. The “Bringer of Rain” was traded just last year to Toronto from Oakland making him the 10th player the win the honor after being traded the previous season. Lorenzo Cain finished a very distant third behind both Donaldson and Trout.
