MLB will close out award season tomorrow with its Most Valuable Player presentations, and the two names drawing the sharpest attention are Pete Crow-Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez. Both are expected to win their first MVP awards, giving the final major reveal of the year a familiar shape: a pair of first-time winners stepping into the sport’s biggest individual spotlight.
That is why the search is spiking now. The award season already moved through the 2026 Managers of the Year reveal yesterday, and tomorrow’s MVP presentations will finish the run. Crow-Armstrong, a Chicago Cubs center fielder, and Alvarez, a Houston Astros designated hitter, are the favorites because the league’s current consensus has settled around them rather than around a deeper field of challengers. In a year when the votes have already confirmed Will Venable as the AL Manager of the Year after he guided the Chicago White Sox to 84 wins, the MVP race is the last major decision left on the board.
Venable’s season gives the award picture its most telling contrast. He beat Kevin Cash and Chad Tracy for the AL honor after the White Sox finished with 84 games won, a sharp turn from the three straight seasons in which they lost 100 or more games. The difference between a manager being celebrated and another being left out runs through this award cycle, and it also helps explain why the MVP debate has narrowed so quickly: voters have already shown they are willing to reward clear, season-defining turnarounds.
There is still a quiet wrinkle in the background. Mark Kotsay was not among the Manager of the Year contenders, even as award season has kept moving and even as the Athletics’ season has been judged against the standard of whether he has produced a winning record or a playoff appearance since succeeding Bob Melvin in 2022. The omission does not change tomorrow’s MVP presentations, but it does underline how selective the recognition has been. Around the same time, the general managers meetings in Las Vegas have entered day three, while the offseason remains slow, with no major free-agent signings or trades yet to change the mood.
So tomorrow should finish the formal awards calendar with a clean result: two players long viewed as the leaders are expected to add their names to the league’s most prominent honor. If that happens, MLB award season will end with a familiar kind of statement — not a surprise, but a confirmation that the voting has already leaned decisively toward Crow-Armstrong and Alvarez.
