At the beginning of the season, the betting favorites for the major awards were as follows.
AL MVP- Aaron Judge
AL Cy Young- Tarik Skubal
NL MVP- Shohei Ohtani
NL Cy Young- Paul Skenes
And well, as we approach the end of the regular season, it is pretty clear who is going to win these major awards……. All the players above.
AL MVP: Judge vs. Cal Raleigh
The American League MVP race has boiled down to a classic favorite vs. underdog storyline: Aaron Judge of the Yankees versus Cal Raleigh of the Mariners.
Judge entered 2025 as the presumed front-runner after winning the AL MVP in 2024. And well, he has been the best hitter in baseball, and it is not really close.
Cal Raleigh, however, crashed the party with a season for the ages by a catcher. His 56 home runs are the most in a single season for a catcher in MLB history. He has also passed Mickey Mantle for the most by a switch-hitter in a season. But that is about all he has over Judge. Yes, he is playing the most challenging position in baseball, and that is not lost on me. However, he is by no means the best defensive catcher in baseball. Judge, on the other hand, is far and away the best hitter, and has been since day one.
NL MVP: Shohei’s Show (Again)
Over in the National League, the MVP race has been, frankly, a one-man show. Shohei Ohtani.
AL Cy Young: Skubal Aims for the Repeat
Detroit’s Tarik Skubal came into 2025 as the AL Cy Young favorite, and he’s living up to the billing. Skubal won the 2024 Cy Young in dominant fashion (leading the AL with a 2.39 ERA, 228 K, 6.4 bWAR, and even 18 wins on a resurgent Tigers team).
In 2025, Skubal will be even better.
ERA: 2.26
ERA+: 198
SO: 222
WAR: 6.4
WHIP: 0.86
Garrett Crochet faced the Yankees on Sunday in what, in my opinion, was his last chance to propel himself into the Cy Young conversation. While he got a quality start, it was far from a dominating performance.
The Cy Young will now go back to Skubal.
NL Cy Young: Skenes
In March, Skenes was the heavy favorite to win the Cy Young.
However, for half the season, Paul Skenes and Zack Wheeler were in a tight race for the Cy Young, with Wheeler becoming the favorite at points during the season.
And then Wheeler hit the shelf, and while Cristopher Sanchez has been superb, it isn’t really a race between the two of them. Even with the Pirates limiting his innings here at the end, Skenes will easily walk away with his first Cy Young.
When Do All the Favorites Win?
Given how our presumed favorites (Judge, Ohtani, Skubal, Skenes) are all leading their races, a natural question arises: Has it ever happened that all four preseason favorites for MVP and Cy Young actually won in the same year? In other words, a clean sweep for the chalk picks. The short answer: it is unprecedented in modern MLB history.
Baseball is a sport famed for its surprises and breakouts, and it’s a safe bet that at least one of the four major awards usually goes to an underdog or a dark horse each season.
Think about recent years. In 2024, for example, only two of the four major awards were won by favorites (Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani were favored and did win MVPs). Still, the Cy Young did not go to preseason frontrunners – AL Cy went to Tarik Skubal, who was a longshot (+1800 odds in spring), and NL Cy shockingly went to a rejuvenated Chris Sale, who was an enormous longshot (+7000). In 2023, AL MVP Ohtani was a favorite and won, but NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. wasn’t the top preseason pick (many had Juan Soto or Mookie Betts ahead of him), and the NL Cy Young winner, Blake Snell, was a +3500 longshot back in April. In 2022, we saw underdogs like Sandy Alcantara (+1600) win NL Cy, and even Justin Verlander – while a big name – had around +2000 odds for AL Cy after coming off Tommy John surgery.
So, when was the last time all four favorites swept the awards? I scoured the records and honestly could not find a definitive instance in recent decades. It’s possible one would have to go back many, many years (and even then, betting markets were not as prevalent) to find anything close. Certainly, in the era of comprehensive preseason odds, there hasn’t been a clean 4-for-4 sweep. Usually, there’s at least one Robbie Ray or R.A. Dickey or Josh Donaldson who has a historic season and then disappears. In fact, in some years, none of the major awards go to the odds-on favorite.
To illustrate how rare a “chalk sweep” is, look at the Cy Young award history: the AL Cy in 2021 was Robbie Ray, who wasn’t even on the preseason odds board (meaning he was such a longshot that sportsbooks didn’t bother listing him). NL Cy Young winners like Snell in 2023 or Alcantara in 2022 likewise started at long odds. Even MVP races often surprise – e.g., Bryce Harper won the NL MVP in 2021 when the preseason buzz was around others, but he had a historic second half that could not be ignored.
A scenario where all four preseason favorites win would be historic. It underscores just how unusually straightforward 2025’s races have been (at least for the MVP and Cy Young). If those four do end up sealing the awards, it will be the first such sweep in modern memory.