Pete Crow-Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez Win MVP Unanimously, Ending Shohei Ohtani's Run

By The Arena Staff

NEW YORK, Nov. 12, 2026 — Shohei Ohtani's run of MVP awards is over, and so is any argument about who replaced him. Baseball has two new MVPs, and not one voter dissented.

Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong won the National League award and Houston Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez took the American League honor Thursday night, each with all 30 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers' Association of America, announced on MLB Network. Both are first-time winners. It is only the third time both MVP votes were unanimous, after 2023 and 2024, and the first season in which both MVPs and both Cy Young winners were unanimous, according to MLB.com and ESPN.

Crow-Armstrong's season was the kind that changes how people talk about a player. The 24-year-old hit .280 with 45 home runs, 41 stolen bases and 107 RBIs, the seventh 40-40 season in big league history, and led both leagues with 10.6 FanGraphs WAR, 3.6 wins clear of Kansas City's Bobby Witt Jr. He also won a Gold Glove and the NL Platinum Glove. He is the first unanimous MVP in Cubs history and the franchise's first winner since Kris Bryant in 2016.

He did it after a slow start. Crow-Armstrong opened the year batting near the bottom of the order before Craig Counsell moved him to leadoff in mid-May, ESPN reported, and MLB.com noted his .673 OPS a third of the way through the schedule was the lowest ever for a player who went on to a 10-WAR season. He drew 83 walks this year after 29 last year.

Then he beat the best player of his generation. Ohtani, who had won three straight MVPs and four of the last five, finished second. "Tonight's kind of the right time for me to appreciate who I won the award over," Crow-Armstrong said, per MLB.com. "That guy has been outright the best baseball player in the world for the last 10 years." Milwaukee's Brice Turang was third.

Alvarez's case was simpler: nobody in the AL hit like him. The 29-year-old won the batting title at .316, led the league with a .432 on-base percentage, a 1.033 OPS and 109 walks, and finished second in both homers (42) and RBIs (106), close enough to flirt with the Triple Crown into September. MLB.com said his 33 intentional walks are the second most in AL history.

It was a long way back from 2025, when injuries held him to 48 games. "Everyone knows what happened last year," Alvarez said through an interpreter, according to ESPN. "I was anxious to get back to this season. Now, we see where that ended up, with an MVP award." He joins Jeff Bagwell and Jose Altuve as the only Astros to win it. Tampa Bay's Junior Caminero finished second and Witt was third.

MLB also posted Alvarez's unanimous AL MVP moment on its official YouTube channel.

Sourcing: MLB.com, ESPN, the AP and MLB.com's reports on Crow-Armstrong and Alvarez.