The MLB regular season ended on October 2, 2022, and the postseason started on October 7th. There has been a debate between two players for American League MVP, one of those players being Aaron Judge who has hit the most home runs in a single season for any center fielder in baseball history. The other player is Shohei Ohtani, who was brought to the MLB from Japan. He also is a two-way player which means he is a pitcher some days and bats when he is not pitching. He also does both incredibly well.
When looking at the stats from the players from the regular season you see that Aaron Judge has 62 home runs and Shohei Ohtani has 34. These are both great numbers when it comes to this aspect of the game, however, Judge does heavily outweigh Ohtani. Moving forward to the extra-base hits, Aaron Judge also beats Ohtani in this aspect by getting 90 extra-base hits whereas Ohtani has 70. When looking at the stolen base percentage, Aaron Judge attempted 19 steals and successfully stole 16 which is equivalent to 82%, Ohtani on the other hand attempted 20 but successfully stole 11 which is the same as a 55% stolen base percentage. This shows that Judge crushes this aspect as well.
When looking at Shohei Ohtani’s pitching stats you see that he has played 28 games, all of which he started in. He has pitched 166 innings in total, equivalent to playing 18 full games and a little under half of one. He allowed 124 hits, 48 runs, 44 walks, 219 strikeouts, 14 home runs, and 43 earned runs. These stats are all relatively good. When it comes to both sides of the ball Shohei has a slight advantage over certain stats. Although it is hard to compare who should win the trophy this year because the positions they play are so different.
When Coach Olmedo was asked who he thinks should win, he said that “Judge did better, but Ohtani plays two positions,” when looking at those two aspects, he thinks Judge should still win the MVP award
Statistically speaking on offense Aaron Judge beats Ohtani by a bit. However, when looking at defense and pitching, Ohtani is the clear winner, even though both are really good. Who do you think will win?