There are less than two weeks to go in the 2025 regular season, and while there's plenty of intrigue around the postseason push, there's ... not quite as much when it comes to awards races. Sure, the debate continues to rage on between Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh for AL MVP, but beyond that, it feels like most of the hardware has been wrapped up for weeks if not months now.
We're not here to unleash a hot take about Shohei Ohtani not deserving NL MVP honors, or deprive Paul Skenes of his rightful Cy Young Award. We just thought we'd spread the love a little bit: Because while most of these races are slam-dunk cases, that doesn't mean we can't save some attention for other players who have been great this year — even if they haven't been quite great enough.
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AL MVP: Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Guardians
Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that Ramirez has been in the same class as Judge or Raleigh this season. But I am saying that Judge and Raleigh's historic greatness risks overshadowing another remarkable season from baseball's most under-the-radar superstar.
At this point, you can pretty much put Ramirez's production down in pen before Opening Day. He's going to hit 30 or so homers. He's going to steal 35-40 bases. He's going to take plenty of walks while hardly ever striking out. And he's going to do all of that — a bat that's been 30 percent above league average this year — while playing excellent defense at third base pretty much every single day.
In another universe, that's an MVP-caliber player without a second thought. Who knows when the age cliff will finally come for J-Ram as he enters his mid-30s, but it hasn't come yet, and he's almost single-handedly kept the Guardians in spitting distance of the final AL Wild Card spot despite Cleveland's decision to sell at the trade deadline. We cannot appreciate him enough.
NL MVP: Juan Soto, New York Mets
It may seem strange to use "Juan Soto" and "dark horse" in the same sentence, but hear me out here. The NL MVP debate very quickly narrowed itself to Shohei Ohtani against whoever happened to be the challenger of the moment — Pete Crow-Armstrong and Kyle Tucker early, Kyle Schwarber late. A lot of that has to do with the fact that Soto got off to an uncharacteristically slow start at the plate, and by the time he got it going, the Mets were shrouded in so much dysfunction that anyone hardly noticed.
But while no one was looking, Soto became Juan Freaking Soto again. Among qualified NL hitters this season, only Ohtani has a better wRC+ than New York's right fielder, and his numbers since Aug. 1 are downright silly: .296/.429/.618 with 15 home runs in 41 games, more or less a 60-homer pace over the course of 162 games. Ohtani is in a class of his own, especially now that he's also back contributing in a meaningful way on the mound. But if we were just ranking the best pure hitters in the NL, that list might start with Soto, and he deserves to be No. 2 with a bullet on everybody's ballot.
AL Cy Young: Nathan Eovaldi, Texas Rangers
Unfortunately, it looks like injury will prevent Eovaldi from throwing enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. If he had, though, it would be the Rangers righty — not Tarik Skubal, not Garrett Crochet, not Hunter Brown, not even his teammate Jacob deGrom — who leads the AL, with a microscopic mark of 1.73.
Seriously: Eovaldi might well have been on his way to one of the best pitching seasons in the modern era if his health had cooperated. In 130 innings of work, he's allowed just 118 baserunners, all while averaging over six frames per start. He's quietly become one of the most well-rounded pitchers in the sport, a guy who once threw 100 but is now seeing far better results with diminished velocity thanks to a full array of secondary pitches and dramatically improved command.
If he were still in the Texas rotation, who knows, they might be occupying a playoff spot right now. One thing's for sure, though, he'd be giving the other Cy Young contenders a serious run for their money.
NL Cy Young: Freddy Peralta, Milwaukee Brewers
The NL Cy Young conversation has been a Paul Skenes coronation pretty much all year long, and for good reason: He's got a 1.92 ERA that's more than a half a run better than his next closest competition, for crying out loud. But while other National League aces like Cristopher Sanchez and Yoshinobu Yamamoto have all had their turn in the spotlight, one name has flown way under the radar: Brewers righty Freddy Peralta, who's in the midst of a breakout season at age 29.
Peralta has long been a tantalizing arm, with one of the best fastballs in the sport and the ability to overwhelm any time he took the mound. This year, though, he's finally found the consistency to go with that ceiling, using his curveball and changeup more and keeping hitters on their toes. He's fourth in the NL in ERA, fifth in WHIP and sixth in K/9, and he's one of the most underrated reasons the Brewers have sprinted to the best record in baseball despite injuries almost everywhere else in their starting rotation.
NL Rookie of the Year: Jakob Marsee, Miami Marlins
Marsee didn't make his MLB debut until Aug. 1, so there was never any chance of him earning Rookie of the Year honors over full-season contributors like Brewers outfielder Isaac Collins or Braves catcher Drake Baldwin. If he had broken in back in the spring, though, all the evidence suggests he'd have run away with the award by now.
Acquired from the Padres in the trade that sent Luis Arraez to San Diego (boy, would they like to have that one back right about now), Marsee has been a revelation in the second half of this season. He's got a remarkably advanced approach at the plate, with a double-digit walk rate, and while he could stand to be a bit more aggressive in order to hit the ball in the air and to the pull side more often, he still does enough damage to be an easy plus hitter. He's not going to put up a .937 OPS forever, but all the underlying metrics support him being an above-average bat moving forward.
Which is big, because he also looks like an above-average defender in center field, with a cannon for an arm and great instincts that help his speed play up. Add it all together, and you've got a player who could be appearing on All-Star teams sooner rather than later.