Welcome back to our first MLB Monday miniseries as the 2024 season came to an end awhile ago, and the award winners were announced in November. It’s been a year since our last edition of this column, so we will do what we have done here for all the professional baseball seasons in North America: analyze awards and make sure the right people get them here. Remember the tagline: often wrong yet never in doubt! Doh!

2024 AL MVP: Aaron Judge, RF, New York (original, confirmed)

This is an open-and-shut case as vote winner Aaron Judge, the star right fielder of the New York Yankees, posted 10.8 WAR, and that meets our traditional historical threshold for automatically awarding this hardware. This is the third time we’ve given him the trophy (2017, 2022). This is his second such season of double-digit WAR, so he’s entering rarified air here in multiple ways. At age 32, this may be his peak. Hmm.

2024 NL MVP: Shohei Ohtani, DH, Los Angeles (original, confirmed)

Only three National Leaguers were in the MLB Top 10 for WAR: Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani (9.2); San Francisco Giants third baseman Matt Chapman (7.1); and Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte (6.8). The Dodgers made the playoffs; the Giants were under .500; and the D’backs missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker. This is our dilemma, and it’s a rough one, so …

Ohtani is a singular talent, and we’ve never given him an MVP nod here because his WAR was usually a combination of hitting and pitching. Not so this time, yet he plays on an All-Star team, in essence, full of outstanding performers, even if no one else on the roster surpassed 5.0 WAR. Would L.A. make the postseason without him? Probably. Then again, they only won the NL West by 5 games over San Diego.

But the team would be in major contention without him, whereas Arizona would not have been close to a postseason slot without Marte. We like Ohtani a lot; we delight in watching him swing a bat; we know he’s a singular talent to post a 54/59 season. And he only got caught stealing 4 times! And perhaps that’s our clincher: the historicity of it all. He may not have reached 10.0 WAR (why didn’t he?!), but 50/50 is nuts.

2024 AL Cy Young: Tarik Skubal, SP, Detroit (original, confirmed)

Only two pitchers topped 5.0 WAR here: vote winner Tarik Skubal (6.3) of Detroit and journeyman Seth Lugo (5.1) of Kansas City. Both teams tied in the AL Central with 86 wins while securing a playoff berth, so this just comes down to basic sabermetrics, and we will confirm Skubal’s vote win. He also won the Triple Crown, so there’s that historical milestone as well (18-4, 2.39 ERA, 228 KS). He’s only 27 years old, too. Wow.

2024 NL Cy Young: Chris Sale, SP, Atlanta (original, confirmed)

Three different guys cracked 6.0+ WAR in the senior circuit: Cincinnati phenom Hunter Greene (6.3); Atlanta southpaw Chris Sale (6.2); and Philadelphia star Zack Wheeler (6.1). Pittsburgh rookie Paul Skenes (5.9) was close behind, but his team did not finish above .500 for the year. Neither did Greene’s, actually, so this comes down to Sale and Wheeler. The Braves ace won the vote, so do we agree with that?

Yes, we do, oddly. He previously won our AL nods in 2017 and 2018, too, but this was different: at age 35 now, Sale has fought back from injuries limited him to a total of 151 IP from 2020-2023 combined. That is not why we give him the hardware: we give it to him because the Braves won 89 games to finish 6 games behind the Phillies, and without Sale’s Triple Crown (oh, yeah, there’s that), they’d have missed the playoffs, too.

2024 AL ROTY: Luis Gil, SP, New York (original); Colton Cowser, OF, Baltimore (revised)

Despite pitching seven games in 2021-2022 combined, Yankees SP Luis Gil was still considered a rookie in 2024, and he won the vote after posting 15 wins for the AL East champions. His 3.1 WAR over almost 152 IP doesn’t jump out, nor does the fact he led the junior circuit in walks (77). That’s not a good thing, even if he went 15-7 overall. We have an issue with those walks and any player leading the league in a bad category.

His WAR mark tied for third in the AL, as well, although the top two guys—Texas Rangers left fielder Wyatt Langford (3.9) and Boston Red Sox RF Wilyer Abreu (3.4)—played for non-winning teams. So, what about Baltimore Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser (3.1), who played for a postseason entrant that finished just 3 games behind the Yankees in the standings, despite a huge payroll disparity? He’s our pick here, easily.

2024 NL ROTY: Paul Skenes, SP, Pittsburgh (original); Jackson Merrill, OF, San Diego (revised)

Skenes won the vote here, despite pitching just 133 innings for a last-place team. The 5.9 WAR mark is very impressive, but it’s empty. Meanwhile, San Diego Padres center fielder Jackson Merrill posted 4.4 WAR for a postseason team while posting an .826 OPS in 156 games. We find Merrill’s contributions to a winning team to be more important than Skenes’ brilliance in a vacuum. It’s just the way the cookie crumbles, eh?