Yesterday, the Baseball Writers Association of America on Earth in the Solar System of the Milky Way Galaxy announced the finalists for the various major awards (Cy Young, MVP, Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year). And, for the first time in ten years, the Washington Nationals have placed a finalist in every single category.
ROY. MOY. Cy Young. MVP. The #Nats are the only @MLB team w/ finalists in all 4 @officialBBWAA award categories. pic.twitter.com/mz1VledM53
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) November 7, 2016
Indeed, Dusty Baker (Manager of the Year), Trea Turner (Rookie of the Year), Max Scherzer (Cy Young) and Daniel Murphy (MVP) have finished among the top three in all four respective categories. According to Jonathan Soveta, they are the first team to land a candidate in the top three in each category since the Minnesota Twins did so back in 2006.
But because I’m a Cubs fan (and thus, hate Daniel Murphy for the 2015 NLCS), I am going to add that in 2015, the Chicago Cubs were nominated for three out of the four awards (Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, and Manager of the Year) and actually won all three for which they were nominated, only missing out on MVP.
And now in 2016, they have been nominated for another three awards (Cy Young, Manager of the Year, MVP) with as good a shot to sweep as anybody. In fact, I’ll bet that, when all is said and done, the Cubs come out with more winners than the Nationals, despite one less nomination.
Thanks for reading. This has been your completely unbiased MLB award predictions.
Michael Cerami, signing off.