MLB Players Support Pete Crow-Armstrong Over Shohei Ohtani for MVP
A recent ESPN poll of MLB players revealed overwhelming support for Pete Crow-Armstrong over Shohei Ohtani in the NL MVP race, with 15 of 21 players choosing the Cubs star.
Video Transcript
Look, everybody's got an opinion about who should win an NL MVP, but who better, who really knows better than Major League Baseball players themselves?
These are the guys that know how hard it is to succeed in the league, on the game's brightest stage each and every day.
And so ESPN did a recent poll to ask Major League Baseball players who should win an NL MVP, Pete Crow-Armstrong or Shohei Ohtani, a tight race that we've seen play out for the last five months or so.
And over 20 players responded to the poll, with Pete Crow-Armstrong getting a majority of the support.
Fifteen voters went his way, just four going for Ohtani.
Some of the supporters for PCA included Reds starting pitcher Brady Singer, Cleveland Guardians first baseman Rhys Hoskins, and White Sox relief pitcher Trevor Richards.
Hoskins says that anyone that's watched PCA over the or the Cubs over the last few months knows that he's the best player on the field.
Trevor Richards said he's a complete player, arguably the best player in baseball, maybe the best fielder in baseball with a chance to go forty-forty.
Now, of course, there were some dissenters, including White Sox starting pitcher Sean Burke, who advocated for Ohtani because of his first half of pitching performances.
Cy Young level pitching for the first half of the season, paired with the offensive numbers that are hard to beat.
Still, Ohtani voters few and far between, and if the season ended today, most MLB players believe PCA is the deserving NL MVP.
I'm sure a lot of Cubs fans would agree with that.
When it comes to the actual vote, I do think general fatigue is gonna be a factor here when it comes to Ohtani.
He wins it just about every year.
Typically with guys like that, you see writers look for a reason to give it to anybody else.
Pete Crow-Armstrong has been the individual story of baseball, from a player perspective this season.
Even the fact that somebody like Hoskins is talking in this poll about, "Hey, so good for the sport that we get to have this conversation, that someone's giving Shohei a run for his money," that tells you why people are gonna be quick to vote for Pete Crow-Armstrong.
He's going to get support because it's different.
Then again, Cal Raleigh had sixty home runs from a catcher in twenty twenty-five, was the story of baseball from a player standpoint and didn't win an, AL MVP over Aaron Judge.
So we will see.
Every day it feels like the odds flip on sports books.
Every day it feels like, Ohtani, PCA flip spots in who is the favorite for the award.
So the last month of the season will prove critical here.
But the players believe in Pete Crow-Armstrong, and that should speak volumes to the baseball writers that actually get to vote.
