Only one player has won a Triple Crown in the past 59 years. Miguel Cabrera did it in 2012, and before him you have to go back to Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
Yordan Alvarez currently leads the American League in batting average, home runs and RBIs. He also has a chance at the outright major league Triple Crown, not just the AL version.
Ballots are due September 28. There are about three weeks left to sort all of this out.
American League MVP: effectively decided
Alvarez has held the top spot on most MVP boards since Aaron Judge went down with an injury in late May. He sits around -2500 in the betting market, which is as close to settled as these things get in early September.
The numbers behind it: a .320-plus average, 36 home runs and 90-plus RBIs entering the final stretch. What makes the case airtight is that he does not just lead the old back-of-the-card categories. He leads the American League in nearly every non-speed offensive metric, and he holds a large edge in win probability added, which matters because Houston has been in a tight playoff push all season.
His August was his worst month by wRC+ and it was still 138, meaning 38% better than league average. That is what a floor looks like for a genuine MVP.
Junior Caminero is the closest challenger at around 13-1. The Tampa Bay third baseman has 35 homers and 84 RBIs while carrying a career-best .895 OPS and a much-improved 11.8% walk rate, and he has done it while the Rays sit atop the AL East. In most years that is an MVP season.
Bobby Witt Jr. leads the American League in both bWAR (6.2) and fWAR (6.3). He plays for a Royals team in last place in the AL Central, and that has been enough to keep him out of the conversation. Whether that is fair is a debate worth having.
Pete Alonso deserves a mention too. In his first season in Baltimore he is tied with Alvarez atop the RBI leaderboard, and the two of them are the only players in baseball this year with 90-plus RBIs and 4-plus fWAR.
The Triple Crown math
Alvarez’s average and RBI leads are comfortable. The home run race is the risk. His lead over Caminero in homers has almost disappeared after a slow August in which he went deep once.
Here is the part that gets lost: Alvarez wins the MVP with or without the Triple Crown. The Triple Crown matters because it neutralizes the voter bias against designated hitters that would otherwise cost him first-place votes. It is insurance, not the case itself.
National League MVP: Crow-Armstrong pulled away
Pete Crow-Armstrong is around -1600 after a resurgent August. Shohei Ohtani sits at +900.
The gap comes down to Ohtani’s arm. He has faced hitters in live batting practice but is not ready for major league games, and every week he stays off the mound removes a piece of the two-way argument that has decided his previous MVP cases. Both players deserve it. Only one can have it.
National League Cy Young: the runaway nobody saw coming
Jacob Misiorowski is at roughly -1400 to Chris Sale’s +750, and the underlying numbers explain why.
A 1.68 ERA. A 39% strikeout rate, which for a starting pitcher is close to absurd. A 248 ERA+ that is more than 50 points clear of the next-closest pitcher in baseball. He became the second-fastest pitcher in major league history to reach 200 strikeouts in a season.
The counterintuitive part is that if he wins this going away, it will be because of consistency rather than dominance. A 67% quality start rate and an average game score of 68.2, five points better than the next pitcher, is the profile of someone who simply never gives a bad start. That is harder to do than posting a few 15-strikeout outings.
Cristopher Sánchez is the outsider case. He does not miss bats at Misiorowski’s rate, but he goes deeper into games and he wins, and he is the only NL pitcher with a realistic shot at 20 victories. In a different year that carries an award. This year he needs Misiorowski to slip.
A pitcher has not won an MVP since Clayton Kershaw in 2014, excluding Ohtani’s two-way seasons. Misiorowski’s ERA+ is good enough that the argument is being made seriously.
American League Cy Young: the only real race left
Cam Schlittler holds a -170 edge over Dylan Cease at +145. Schlittler’s 194 ERA+ is second in baseball behind Misiorowski.
That margin is solid but not safe. Four or five starts remain for each pitcher, and a single disaster outing in the middle of September could flip it. This is the award to watch if you want something genuinely undecided.
Rookie of the Year
Kevin McGonigle is the American League lock, described by more than one voter-watcher as the only take-it-to-the-bank award on the board.
The National League race got scrambled when JJ Wetherholt, the previous leader, was overtaken. That one is genuinely open with several players in the mix.
Manager of the Year is the one people forget
It is the least discussed award and the one most likely to produce a genuinely interesting winner this season.
The American League case is sitting in plain sight. A club that lost 121 games in 2024 entered September leading the AL Central, a run we unpack in the White Sox chase in the AL Central. Whatever combination of development, roster management and clubhouse work produced that, it is the sort of turnaround the award exists to recognise.
The National League version is harder. Milwaukee has the best record in baseball and Atlanta engineered a resurgence after a slow start, but both were expected to be good. Voters historically reward the team that outperformed its projection rather than the one that met a high one, which usually hurts the clubs at the very top.
Keep an eye on it. Manager of the Year is the award most likely to be handed to the story of the season rather than the résumé.
What to watch over the next three weeks
Alvarez’s home run pace. Everything else on the American League side is settled, and the Triple Crown is the one storyline that could produce something baseball has seen twice in six decades.
Track his homers against Caminero’s. If Alvarez goes into the final week holding all three leads, you will be watching something almost nobody currently playing has seen happen.
Related on The Sports America
Source links for editors
- https://www.mlb.com/news/yordan-alvarez-pete-crow-armstrong-lead-fifth-2026-mvp-poll
- https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/48350446/2026-mlb-awards-sports-betting-odds-tracker-mvp-cy-young-rookie-year
- https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/49672771/mlb-2026-awards-watch-august-mvp-cy-young-al-nl-rookie-manager-year-ohtani-pca
- https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-september-storylines-playoff-races-yordan-alvarez-triple-crown-mvp-ohtani-crow-armstrong-misiorowski/
