Baseball|Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout Are Baseball's MVPs
At the baseball writers' dinner in New York in January, Sandy Koufax stood at a podium and addressed the crowd in a hotel ballroom, with Clayton Kershaw a few feet away. Koufax was presenting Kershaw with the National League Cy Young Award.
'As a player, Clayton is never satisfied,' Koufax said. 'He's tried to get better every year, and if he gets better after the year he just had, I'd like to apply for next year's job of presenting this to him again.'
Koufax might want to start preparing more remarks, because Kershaw did get better. After winning another Cy Young Award on Wednesday, Kershaw captured the N.L.'s Most Valuable Player award on Thursday. Koufax, another Los Angeles Dodgers ' left-hander, won both awards in 1963.
Another Southern California star, Mike Trout of the Angels, won the American League award on Thursday. Trout collected all 30 first-place votes from the baseball writers, and Kershaw also won in a runaway.
After going 21-3 with a 1.77 earned run average, Kershaw got 18 of 30 first-place votes, with eight going to the Miami Marlins' Giancarlo Stanton and four to the Pittsburgh Pirates' Andrew McCutchen, last year's winner. Kershaw became the first N.L. pitcher to win the M.V.P. award since Bob Gibson in 1968.
'Wow,' Kershaw said on MLB Network, moments after the announcement. 'That's amazing. I can't even believe it. To be associated with that award and those finalists - Andrew, Giancarlo - I'm blown away right now.'
The Detroit Tigers' Justin Verlander was the last pitcher to win an M.V.P. award, doing so in the American League in 2011. Verlander worked more than 250 innings that season, while Kershaw, who missed April with a muscle strain in his upper back, worked just under 200.
But he compressed a lot of dominance into 27 starts, leading the N.L. in wins, E.R.A., complete games (6), walks plus hits per inning pitched (0.857), strikeouts per nine innings (10.8) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (7.71). As a hitter, he had a higher on-base percentage (.235) than he allowed to the hitters who faced him (.231).
Despite the time he missed, Kershaw faced 749 batters; the league leader in plate appearances, the St. Louis Cardinals' Matt Carpenter, had only 709. Stanton, whose season ended on Sept. 11 when he was hit in the face by a pitch, had 638 plate appearances while leading the N.L. in homers, slugging and total bases and playing his home games in a pitcher-friendly park.
Trout had numbers similar to Stanton's, without a pitcher as overpowering as Kershaw to take votes away. Trout, who turned 23 in August, was the youngest player to win an M.V.P. award since Cal Ripken in 1983. He was the first unanimous winner in the American League since Ken Griffey Jr. in 1997.
'It's unbelievable to think about it,' Trout said on MLB Network. 'If you would have told me this before the season started, I would have laughed at you. It's an unbelievable feeling. It's awesome.'
Trout batted .287 with 36 homers, 111 runs batted in and a .939 on-base plus slugging percentage. He became more of a traditional slugger in 2014, setting career highs in homers, runs batted in and total bases, and career lows in batting average and stolen bases, while leading the A.L. in strikeouts. Trout played only one outfield position, center, and scored lower than before in advanced fielding metrics.
Even so, it was a remarkable season - his R.B.I., total bases (338) and runs scored (115) led the league - and it helped the Angels to 98 victories, the most in the majors. Trout was probably better, by his high standards, in 2012 and 2013, but he lost the M.V.P. vote both seasons to the Tigers' Miguel Cabrera, whose team made the playoffs, while the Angels did not.
Trout sprinkled his usual array of can-you-believe-it highlights into his season, including a leaping, no-look, behind-his-head catch in Seattle, and the majors' longest homer of the season (according to Baseball Prospectus): a 489-foot rocket in Kansas City on June 27.
The Tigers' Victor Martinez finished second, followed by the Cleveland Indians' Michael Brantley, the Chicago White Sox' Jose Abreu and the Toronto Blue Jays' Jose Bautista. Robinson Cano of the Seattle Mariners finished sixth; his former team, the Yankees, had no players who appeared on a ballot. Neither, for that matter, did the Boston Red Sox.
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