Two Baseball Writers Association of America writers from each AL city were chosen to vote on the AL MVP award. Harper took all 30 first place votes to win the award, while Donaldson had 23 first place votes to beat out Trout, who finished with the other seven.
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Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt received 18-second place votes to finish second, while Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto finished third in the balloting. Kansas City Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain was third. The Blue Jays led the majors in myriad offensive categories including runs scored (891), home runs (232), doubles (308), total bases (2,518) and RBIs (852). Harper, who won the award in a unanimous vote, became the first NL player under the age of 24 to win the MVP since Johnny Bench did so in 1970. 330 batting average, .460 on-base percentage, .649 slugging percentage and 1.109 OPS were almost unbeatable (only Dee Gordon had a higher BA with.333). Showing his ability for clutch power hits, of his 41 home runs in 2015, 27 of them either tied the score or gave Toronto the lead.
To start, it should be noted that Harper is having himself one fantastic day, as he collected himself a unanimous National League MVP award.
By a few measures, Trout may have had a better season than Donaldson. In 198 games with Houston the past three years, he has a. 236 average with 10 home runs, 46 RBIs and 42 stolen bases in 198 games. J.J. Watt always says, ‘You have to pay your rent every single day no matter what.’ When you think that you’ve made it and you’ve done all that you can do, then you need to retire and you shouldn’t play anymore because that’s not true.
Harper put aside his injury problems from recent seasons and put up huge numbers. Donaldson’s award caps off the Blue Jays’ best season since winning the World Series in 1993.
It didn’t take too long for Josh Donaldson to fit in with the Toronto Blue Jays. “We knew it was going to be a better situation for my career and we truly believed I was going to be able to perform at a higher level”. He hit 13 of his homers in the first inning which led the majors and set a club record.
Batting second in baseball’s most productive lineup, Donaldson drove in more runs (123 to Trout’s 90), scored more runs (122 to 104) and had more hits (184 to 172). That’s an insane expectation, of course, but that’s what the fans wanted from a player who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated as a 16-year-old.
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What happened here? Was it because Josh Donaldson had more RBIs, an antiquated and useless traditionalist counting stat that should be stricken from the box score?
