The Yankees are likely to do what they have never done, and only has been accomplished once in either league since Rookie of the Year award voting was expanded in 1980: place two players in the top five for both MVP and Rookie of the Year.
Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have spent much of this season perceived as no-doubters to finish among the AL MVP top five. Austin Wells’ strong second half has him poised to join Luis Gil in the top five of AL Rookie of the Year voting.
Before 1980, there was a bit of a Wild West element to Rookie voting. In the first two years (1947-48) that the national body of the Baseball Writers Association of America selected a winner, it was one award covering both leagues. Until 1956, each voter determined what constituted a rookie. The current guideposts for rookie eligibility entering a season of fewer than 130 at-bats, 50 innings pitched and 45 days on the active roster was not codified until 1971.
And in 1980, recognizing expansion from 16 teams when Jackie Robinson won the initial Rookie award in 1947 to what was 26 teams, ballots went from selecting just a winner to a top three. With 30 teams now and a greater willingness than ever to play youngsters, I would argue the ballot should be expanded to five. But that is for another day …
Before 1980, there had been five occasions in which a team had two top-five finishers for MVP and Rookie of the Year — and one came in 1975 when Boston’s Fred Lynn won the AL MVP and Jim Rice was third, and that duo finished 1-2 for AL Rookie of the Year.
Since 1980, it has occurred just once. That was in 2007 when the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez won his third AL MVP. The Red Sox had David Ortiz and Mike Lowell finish fourth and fifth, respectively, while Dustin Pedroia won the Rookie of the Year and Daisuke Matsuza came in fourth (and another Red Sox, Hideki Okajima, was sixth). With that bevy of high-end performance, Boston also won the World Series.
Lowell, Pedroia and Ortiz hit brilliantly in that postseason — with Lowell winning the World Series MVP — and, though not great overall, Matsuzaka won an ALCS Game 7 clincher against Cleveland and World Series Game 3 en route to a sweep of Colorado.
It is another pressure point for this year’s Yankees — if they get this kind of wide awards recognition — to end a drought in which they have not appeared in a World Series since 2009.
Awards are voted upon by the BBWAA before the postseason begins, but are not announced until a few weeks after the World Series is completed. So the Yankees will not know the results during October.
Yet, it has been evident for a while that — without a startling change in the final two weeks — either Judge or Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. will win the AL MVP, with Soto and Baltimore’s Gunnar Henderson likely to finish three-four in one way or the other.
The AL Rookie race is more fluid. The top five are likely to be in some order Gil, Wells, Boston’s Wilyer Abreu, Baltimore’s Colton Cowser and Oakland’s Mason Miller, though Cleveland’s excellent set-up man Cade Smith could crash that party. It is hard to imagine a top five, though, without Gil, who so capably filled in for Gerrit Cole in the first half, and Wells, who helped solve the Yankees’ cleanup mess in the second half.
And though Gil, Wells, Anthony Volpe (who finished eighth for AL Rookie last year) and other homegrown pieces speak to a future upside, these Yankees have pressure now because tomorrow is never promised.
From 2014-18, the Yankees had five players finish in the top three for AL Rookie of the Year (Judge, Dellin Betances, Gary Sanchez, Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres) and also two sixth-place finishes (Masahiro Tanaka and Jordan Montgomery). And Judge finished second for AL MVP in 2017 as he won his Rookie award. But an ALCS Game 7 loss that year to Houston is the closest the Yankees have come to reaching the World Series in this run. Of that group, only Judge and Torres remain, and Torres is in his walk year.
If Judge and Soto do finish top-five for MVP, that would hardly be unique for teammates. Three sets of teammates finished in the top five between both leagues last year. Both leagues have had at least one set of teammates finish in the top five in each of the past four seasons and the AL in six of the past seven.
But when you start matching teammate top-five MVP finishes with top-five Rookie finishes, it becomes rarer — in part, because mostly MVPs come from the best teams and rookies come from all over, and the worse teams tend to give longer leashes to youngsters.
If, for example, Judge wins the AL MVP and either Gil or Wells the Rookie award, it would be the first time we have seen that double since 2010, when the Rangers’ Josh Hamilton won AL MVP and Neftali Feliz the Rookie of the Year. Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki won both awards in 2001. The last time it happened in the NL was for the 1998 Cubs with Sammy Sosa as MVP and Kerry Wood as Rookie of the Year.
inning against the Kansas City Royals at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 9, 2024. JASON SZENES FOR THE NEW YORK POST
In a smaller league and a dominant period for the Yankees, they won both awards in 1951 with Yogi Berra as the MVP and Gil McDougald as the Rookie of the Year, 1954 Berra/Bob Grim, 1957 Mickey Mantle/Tony Kubek and 1962 Roger Maris/Tom Tresh.
That 1962 season was among the closest the Yankees came to the kind of four-score they are trying to pull off this season — with Maris and Mickey Mantle finishing 1-2 for MVP and Tresh winning Rookie. In 1958, Bob Turley was second for the AL MVP, Mantle was fifth while Ryne Duren was second for Rookie of the Year. In 1957, when Mantle and Kubek won their awards, McDougald was fifth for MVP. In 1951, when Berra and McDougald won awards, Allie Reynolds was third for MVP. And, in 1949, Phil Rizzuto and Joe Page finished second and third for MVP while Jerry Coleman was third for Rookie of the Year.
In those five seasons, the Yankees won the World Series four times and lost in seven games to the Braves in 1957. Yes, it was a different era for many reasons, notably that just the team with the best record in each league advanced to the World Series.
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These Yankees would have to win at least three playoff rounds to be champions, perhaps four. Still, they will enter with the near certainty of having four of their players finish in the top-five between MVP and Rookie of the Year for the first time. And it is possible that they will have players just flat out win those awards.
Is that just a nice honor for the organization — or a sign of October possibility?
