Mets Ace deGrom Among Finalist For NL Cy Young
On Monday night the MLB revealed who the finalists will be for the AL and NL MVP and Cy Young Awards for each respective league for the 2018 season.
Mookie Betts, Mike Trout, and Jose Ramirez finished in the top three among AL MVP finalists. Meanwhile Nolan Arenado, Christian Yelich and Javier Baez finishes in the top three among NL MVP finalists.
When it came to the hurlers, Justin Verlander, Blake Snell and Corey Kluber round out the AL Cy Young finalists. On the NL side, Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and Aaron Nola make up the NL Cy Young finalists.
Your 2018 AL MVP finalists:@mookiebetts@mrlapara@MikeTrout pic.twitter.com/xLG3flO3Ck
— MLB (@MLB) November 5, 2018
The question now is this, who should win?
On the AL side, I predicted before the season that Mike Trout would win AL MVP, but I’d feel pretty guilty in not giving the nod to Mookie Betts here.
Betts was one of two Boston Red Sox I felt should’ve been a top three finalist for the AL MVP. No disrespect to Jose Ramirez, but he bottomed out as a hitter in the second half of the season as he barely topped the .270 mark as a hitter.
J.D. Martinez, on the other hand, finished with a .330 batting average with 43 home runs and 130 RBIs. Even if you want to hold being a designated-hitter against him, those numbers speak for themselves.
Betts was unbelievable with the bat and on defense and won the batting title this year while hitting 32 homers.
The AL Cy Young is a tough one, but I’ll go with the only 20-game winner this season in Blake Snell.
As for the NL MVP, if anyone besides Christian Fricken Yelich wins the award I’m boycotting the MLB from that day forward.
The New York homer in me wants to see Jacob deGrom win the award, but I’m going to go with Max Scherzer here.
While deGrom has a case with his team’s horrendous offense and him being able to mostly negate that by going deep into just about every game this season with two earned runs or fewer, Scherzer’s got him beat in mostly every other statistical category and also received little run support. At the end of the day, wins will always play a factor in this award being won (See Rick Porcello in 2016).
But that’s my thoughts, what are yours? Leave your award winners below!