When this baseball season began, it felt easy to forecast the major award winners. The four champions from 2025 all looked primed to repeat in 2026. But the season has not exactly worked out that way. Paul Skenes, the 2025 National League Cy Young award winner, has seen his ERA nearly double. Tarik Skubal, Skenes’ Cy Young counterpart in the American League, is now a Dodger. Aaron Judge, the American League MVP, just returned from an injury layoff that lasted more than three months.

And as for Shohei Ohtani …

Well, let’s take some questions for this week’s mailbag, in which we’re talking all things award season. The questions have been edited for clarity.

Pete Crow-Armstrong will win National League MVP with an asterisk, given it will be revealed that Shohei Ohtani needs at least two medical procedures the week after the Dodgers’ season ends. PCA has had a great year! But it’s a bummer to see health be what stops Ohtani’s run of dominance. We were robbed of a classic MVP race by the breakdown of Ohtani’s knees, arm and elbow. Hopefully Pete and Shohei can both go end-to-end next year, full throttle. — Jacob N.

Pete Crow-Armstrong entered Wednesday worth 9.9 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs. He led the National League in OPS (.948), wOBA (.402) and wRC+ (158). He ranked second in stolen bases. He plays strong defense in center field. If that sort of season requires an asterisk, well, I don’t know what to tell you.

If Ohtani made it back as a pitcher and maintained his level as a hitter, that would have made for a fascinating debate. Which is more valuable: 155 games of elite outfield defense or 100 innings of elite pitching? You could see a case for both sides. But in these past few weeks, as Ohtani has broken down, Crow-Armstrong has gone supernova. PCA looks like the runaway favorite to win now. That might have been different, if Ohtani, who is headed to the injured list, had stayed healthy.

But, of course, health was always going to be what stopped Ohtani, whether it was this season or the next or some season down the road. His primary competition has always been the limitations of his own body. That is what slowed him when he debuted in 2018 and again when he was in the midst of a three-year run of dominance in 2023. I will be fascinated to see how Ohtani and the Dodgers navigate his next few seasons. His performance as a pitcher made clear that he can be elite: a 1.79 ERA in 14 starts with 95 strikeouts in 85 2/3 innings. Neither party will want to just mothball that sort of ability. But the idea of Ohtani holding up across a full season, as he gets deeper into his 30s, feels more and more remote.

No matter how the White Sox finish, if Will Venable isn’t the AL Manager of the Year, then cancel the award. From 121 losses to postseason (likely) is amazing. Yes, it’s the AL Central – but tell me with a straight face you picked the White Sox as the division winner. — Lance S.

I can tell you with a straight face that I picked the Royals. And technically they have not yet been eliminated. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

No, Lance, I have to say I agree. The Manager of the Year award is the most imprecise trophy given out by the BBWAA every fall. The managerial job has grown so complex, and where a manager begins and a front office ends can be difficult to discern. So it can be challenging to assign either credit or blame to the skipper. Such are the perils of modern middle management.

As a default, the Manager of the Year voters tend to reward the manager whose team most exceeded expectations. Venable is the clear choice in the American League this year.  The White Sox were projected to 67 games in 2026, according to FanGraphs. They entered Wednesday on pace for 84. The Guardians may still run them down in the American League Central. But no matter the result, this season represents a leap forward for the franchise. Venable should receive some hardware as a reward.

I know injuries have played a big role, but have you seen top-three MVP finishers fall off so far the next year as Cal Raleigh, Aaron Judge, and Jose Ramirez have? — Kale F.

That is a great question, and I spent a good little while this week trying to research it, at least for the past couple decades. It is a really uncommon occurrence. I found some individual collapses from the recent past, but no season-to-season collapse for a trio akin to the one experienced by this group.

Sometimes a player experiences a season in the sun and falls back to Earth, as Matt Kemp and Jacoby Ellsbury did in 2011. Kemp finished one homer shy of the 40-40 club, posted an 8.0 bWAR season and, as Dodgers fans still lament, probably should have won the MVP over Ryan Braun. In the American League, Ellsbury generated 8.3 bWAR and finished in second to Justin Verlander. The next season, Kemp produced 2.8 WAR and Ellsbury managed just 0.9.

Sometimes a player’s flaws overtake his strengths. That was the story for Chris Davis in 2013 and 2014. He slugged 53 dingers in 2013 and finished third behind Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout. His strikeouts jumped the next season and he hit just 26 homers. Victor Martinez was the American League runner-up in 2014 despite ranking 16th in fWAR among A.L. hitters. A year later, at 36, he was worth -2.0 fWAR. And Bryce Harper has had some fluctuations: 9.7 bWAR as MVP in 2015, 1.6 bWAR a year later.

But usually the players who were elite in one season tend to be, at the very least, pretty good in the next. That is how greatness tends to function.

For me, the struggles by Ramírez are the most surprising. Judge is the best hitter on the planet, but he does tend to get hurt, as he did earlier this summer. The 2025 season always felt like an outlier for Raleigh, who has, ahem, rallied to heat up these past few weeks. But Ramírez has been metronomically brilliant for so long that it is shocking to see him dip into more mortal territory, a 100 OPS+ heading into Wednesday.

Who is in the running for the AL Rookie of the Year? Also does that earn the represented club a pick after the first round in the draft? — Hillbilly H.

It feels like a two-horse race between Detroit Tigers infielder Kevin McGonigle and Cleveland Guardians starter Parker Messick. McGonigle has the edge in both versions of WAR, and is the heavy betting favorite. I suspect he will win. But don’t sleep on Messick, especially if he strings together some more strong outings and Cleveland reclaims first place in the American League Central.

Each player would be eligible to net his club a Prospect Promotion Incentive pick with a victory. Neither had accrued 60 days of service time before the season, and both were ranked on all three of the prospect lists (Baseball America, ESPN and MLB Pipeline) that are used as the rubric for eligibility.

And there’s a chance both players earn picks. Because a team receives a pick if a PPI-eligible guy wins the Rookie of the Year, or finishes in the top three in MVP or Cy Young voting. Both have a shot at finishing third — McGonigle behind Yordan Alvarez and Bobby Witt Jr., and Messick behind Cam Schlittler and Dylan Cease.

I’m not hearing enough or any love for Sonny Gray and the year he’s having: 2.69 ERA, 17-4, enough said …  — Ray.Mac804

I think Gray will get some love on Cy Young ballots, albeit behind Schlittler and Cease. It will be a real challenge for voters to differentiate between Gray, Messick, Drew Rasmussen and Reid Detmers. There are enough voters who still get pumped about the old school stats like wins and ERA — and those numbers, to me, still hold meaning. But every player has a stat worth considering. Rasmussen has a lower FIP than Gray. Detmers and Messick have thrown more innings. Gavin Williams has generated more strikeouts with a lower xFIP. Voting for the Cy Young has become so difficult. There are so many numbers!

How much do innings pitched come into consideration for Cy Young voting? Both Chris Sale and Jacob Misiorowski will finish the year with considerably fewer innings and fewer starts than Cristopher Sanchez and Jesus Luzardo. Seems the true workhorses that go every 5th day and pitch 200 innings are not valued as much as they used to be. — Patchen F.

Have you ever been subtly or overtly lobbied by a member of a front office about an award? Have you had any fun interactions with players around your status as a writer who votes on awards? — Jay O.

I haven’t voted for a Baseball Writers Association of America award since 2015. Honestly I had no recollection of what I voted for that year until I looked it up: I gave Jeff Banister a first-ballot vote for Manager of the Year, which he won. My mind remains a complete blank on that one. Congrats to him.

A year later, I joined the Los Angeles Times, which did not permit writers to vote, and I found I didn’t really miss the unpaid stress of trying to get it right. So I kept not voting after I came to The Athletic, which permits its writers to vote, in 2019. Plus, I moved from Los Angeles to New York, and the NYC BBWAA chapter is stacked to the brim with available voters.

Anyway, you are far more likely to get lobbied by an agent than you are by a front-office person or a player. The players think it’s gauche and the execs just want to crush the arbitration cases.

TJ Rumfield would be the favorite for Rookie of the Year if he played in a major market, or even anywhere but Colorado. — Kerry G.

You may have a point. Heading into Wednesday’s games, Rumfield led all NL rookies with a .375 wOBA and ranked third with a 125 wRC+. But he doesn’t really have a compelling narrative case. J.J. Wetherholt has the WAR argument. Sal Stewart has the homers and the ribeyes. Carson Benge is surging and may finish with better offensive numbers than Wetherholt. A lot of voters view Colorado offense as inflated and will discount Rumfield, in part because his counting stats — 15 homers, 62 RBIs — don’t jump off the page. That might be different if he played for the Mets or the Braves or the Dodgers. But even that, I don’t think he would be the favorite. That is, and should be, Wetherholt.

How many years after Ohtani retires does MLB rename the MVP award “The Ohtani”? (The “Oh” for short.) — Bryan H.

I suppose the point of doing a mailbag is to be able to say things like, “Well, actually …” So allow me to say: Well, actually, Major League Baseball is not in charge of these awards. They are administered by the BBWAA. MLB has a version of the MVP award, called the Hank Aaron Award, which is given to the best hitter in each league. I do not foresee MLB renaming that. And I do not foresee the BBWAA affixing the name of one player to the trophy. Besides, Ohtani still has to collect four more of them to surpass the reigning MVP of all MVPs, the seven-time champ Barry Bonds.

Any chance we’ll see separate Rookie of the Year awards for pitchers and position players in the near future? — Eleanor W.

That would not shock me. There has been a push for additional awards among some voters in recent years, and a proposal to create some version of the Rookie Cy Young would likely generate support among the voters.

Last summer the BBWAA created the Relief Pitcher of the Year award, which will be given out for the first time this fall. I am generally against trophy expansion creep. I voted against creating the reliever award, but was overwhelmingly outvoted by my peers. I think creating new awards dilutes the prestige of the existing awards. The prevailing argument for creating the reliever award is that relievers are an important part of the game but rarely get a chance to win the Cy Young award. At a BBWAA summit during the Winter Meetings a couple years ago, I countered that in that case, we should create a Bench Player of the Year award, because bench players are an important part of the game but rarely get a chance to win the MVP. I would describe the reaction to that point as “tepid.”

But hey, none of this is a big deal. Give out a reliever award, go nuts. Split the Rookie of the Year in two. What’s the harm? I suspect this will happen in the coming years.

Mickey Gasper for AL MVP. — Nunya B.

One of my long-standing beliefs is that now that more MVP voters should dedicate their 10th-place vote to the player who brought them the most joy that season. You can spend hours trying to get the first nine votes in the proper order. But check that last box for a fellow whose story made you smile, or dished some quotes that made you laugh, or maybe bunted way too often for no reason. Just a fellow who brought some whimsy to the long season.

Gasper would be a great choice.