Most Valuable Players 2023

Most Valuable Players of 2023 Shohei Ohtani and Ronald Acuna Jr.

By David A. Avila

No doubt about this year’s Most Valuable Players.

For the first time in baseball history two players Ronald Acuna Jr. for the National League and Shohei Ohtani for the American League were voted Most Valuable Players unanimously by the Baseball Writers of American Association in 2023.

Despite not playing for the month of September the designated hitter for the Los Angeles Angels still received every vote. It was the second time in three years that the two-way player from Japan was voted Most Valuable Player and second time he received every vote.

No surprise.

Ohtani led the American League in homers with 44 though he did not hit any in September due to injury. Still, the left-handed slugger proved to the world once again that his kind of talent is the rarest of rare.

Aside from being one of the best hitters in the AL, he also was one of the top pitchers in all of baseball. Ohtani’s ability to excel as a hitter and pitcher puts him in a unique plateau. He also played on a team that lost more games than it won and was never in the playoffs.

The baseball writers view his ability as one of the greatest ever seen.

As a hitter he batted .304 with 44 homers, 95 RBIs, 102 runs scored and 20 stolen bases and a 1.066 OPS. As a pitcher he threw 132 innings with 10 wins, 167 strikeouts, 3.14 ERA and 1.06 WHIP.

It was a remarkable season that was cut short by an arm injury that caused him to have surgery.

In the National League it was Ronald Acuna Jr. who blasted out of the box on fire from the first month and proved to the baseball world that his previous injury a year earlier would not keep him from being the best.

Acuna gained every vote though he had three others competing with almost equal production offensively. One category that no others came close was the Atlanta Brave outfielder’s ability to steal bases like it was the 1960s all over again. Acuna swiped 73 bases last year.

No other player had hit more than 40 homers and stole 70 plus bases before. Closest was the great Ty Cobb.

Acuna had suffered two down years before proving to everyone that he was 100 percent recovered.

The Venezuelan player from La Guaira, batted .337 with 41 homers, 106 RBIs, 149 runs scored and 73 stolen bases. His OPS was 1.012. It was the kind of year the great Willie Mays might have 60 years ago.

Acuna is only 25 years old and this could only be the start for the Braves outfielder.