Shohei Ohtani, Mason Miller highlight MLB quarter-season awards for 2024 season

Winning Rookie of the Year as a relief pitcher requires nothing short of a perfect season. Devin Williams accomplished the feat for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2020, but that was a shortened season, so it’s hard to project Williams as the winner over a 162-game stretch. Beyond Williams, we have to go back to 2011, when the Atlanta Braves’ Craig Kimbrel bursted onto the scene with a 46-save, 127-strikeout season. Frankly, one has to be the clear-cut best reliever in baseball to have any shot at winning this award.

Fortunately, the Oakland Athletics’ Mason Miller has been just that — the most dominant and electrifying reliever in baseball. Since his first outing in which he surrendered two earned runs, he’s gone 17.1 innings without allowing a run, racking up 37 strikeouts and posting a -0.44 FIP, a number which should probably not even be possible to achieve. He’s also leading his own team in strikeouts at 38, two more than starter Paul Blackburn, who has thrown almost 30 more innings.

Miller is the best thing about watching Oakland A’s baseball in 2024 and he’s transcended even A’s fandom. MLB social media accounts light up when the game’s hardest-throwing pitcher takes to the mound and makes some of the game’s best hitters look hopeless at the dish. For all those reasons, he’s the only choice for AL Rookie of the Year.

NL Rookie of the Year – Shota Imanaga

There’s another Japanese import pitcher who got paid $325 million this past offseason to come to MLB and dominate the National League, one who is still just 25 and won three straight Sawamura Awards, the NPB equivalent of a Cy Young. But instead, it’s the Chicago Cubs’ Shota Imanaga, five years older and $270 million poorer, who has stolen the show.

Imanaga leads all qualified pitchers with a 0.96 ERA and 2.6 bWAR. He’s doing so with a fastball slower than 80% of other big-league pitchers, but no one can figure out how to get a barrel on it. Not only is he the clear-cut Rookie of the Year winner, but he has a fantastic case for NL Cy Young, something even the Cubs couldn’t have possibly expected when they started him in the back half of their rotation to begin the season.

Of course, winning both Rookie of the Year and Cy Young will require Imanaga to keep up his dominance once teams start seeing him a second time, which has been the main cause for hesitation in immediately declaring him one of the game’s best. But even a larger-than-average amount of regression would leave Imanaga in a great spot to win Rookie of the Year, as he’s clearly proven that he was more than ready to make meaningful contributions to a big-league rotation.

AL Manager of the Year – Matt Quatraro

The easiest formula to find a manager of the year is to look at the biggest year-over-year improvement for a single team and fork over the trophy. It’s how we got, among others, 2021 winner Gabe Kapler, 2022 Terry Francona and 2023 Brandon Hyde/Skip Schumaker. So in the American League, this award is pretty simple to decide.

The 2023 Kansas City Royals were horrific, winning just 56 baseball games to finish with the second-worst record in all of baseball. In 2024, they’re 26-18, putting them on pace to win 96 games, with the fourth-best run differential in the AL. And even if they don’t keep this torrid pace up, Matt Quatraro still stands a great chance to win manager of the year if Kansas City stays over .500 and in the Wild Card hunt until the very end.

NL Manager of the Year – Rob Thomson

In the National League, it’s less simple. Only five of the 15 teams are over .500 right now and they’re pretty much the usual suspects: four 2023 playoff teams and the Chicago Cubs, who only had themselves to blame for missing the playoffs. But the Philadelphia Phillies, who won 90 games in 2023, are currently on pace to win 113. That makes Rob Thomson the best overall candidate in a field full of blue bloods.

The previous two seasons have been all about how the Phillies have finished. They tend to get off to slow starts, one of which led to Thomson’s predecessor, Joe Girardi, being fired, then turn it on for the stretch run. But this season, perhaps Philly has decided to make things easier on itself. If it takes the NL East from the Atlanta Braves, one of the most dominant regular season teams in recent memory, that sets up nicely for Thomson to take home the hardware.

AL Cy Young – Tarik Skubal

It’s rare that a sexy preseason breakout candidate actually exceeds the hype. Every baseball nut was raving about the Detroit Tigers’ Tarik Skubal all winter long, as the 27-year-old lefty had a phenomenal showing in 80 innings in 2023. But in 2024, he’s been must-see TV and so far, he’s also been the most dominant starting pitcher in the American League.

In 49 innings, Skubal has racked up 60 strikeouts, the eighth-best K/9 in baseball. His 2.02 ERA is better than any of those above him in K/9, plus he’s still got a perfect 5-0 record to his name. And to top it off, Skubal has a minuscule WHIP of 0.86, best in the AL and third-best in MLB. He’s got the best combination of resume and projectability of every candidate among AL starters.

NL Cy Young – Ranger Suárez

It’s truly scary for teams looking to outlast the Phillies in 2024 that Ranger Suárez is still kind of the team’s number three starter. He leads all pitchers with seven wins, has a 1.50 ERA and MLB-best 0.72 WHIP with only eight walks in 54 innings. Yet, if the postseason started tomorrow, it would be no surprise for Rob Thomson to save Suárez for Game 3 behind Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola.

However, just because Suárez doesn’t have the career track record of some of his rotation mates doesn’t mean he should be disqualified from a quarter-season Cy Young Award. The simple fact is that of all the pitchers in the National League, he’s got the best combination of run prevention and innings logged, having thrown almost a full inning per start more than Shota Imanaga. Ranger Suárez, take a bow.

AL MVP – Kyle Tucker

MVP is a particularly tough code to decipher at this time of year. Do you go with the position player with the most overall WAR? The one with the best OPS? Or perhaps the home run king? Well, in this case, we’re choosing the person who has two of those three.

Kyle Tucker narrowly trails Bobby Witt Jr. and Gunnar Henderson in bWAR, but his .993 OPS and 13 home runs lead the American League. Offense usually wins out over the course of a season and if Witt and Henderson are Tucker’s main competition, there’s no doubt which of the three you’d want at the plate in a big spot right now.

And as an added bonus, Tucker also has a perfect one-to-one strikeout-to-walk ration at the moment, nearly matching the New York Yankees’ Juan Soto. In fact, Tucker is second in MLB in total walks with 31, just one behind Aaron Judge. Plate discipline is of massive importance in 2024 and Tucker is showing himself to be among the game’s elite in that regard.

NL MVP – Shohei Ohtani

How on earth do you give MVP to a designated hitter? Especially when that designated hitter has a teammate leading all of baseball in WAR while playing shortstop for the first time as a 31-year-old? You hit like Shohei Ohtani is hitting in 2024, that’s how.

Clearly, it’s down to Ohtani and Mookie Betts for NL MVP and it’s astonishing how much better Ohtani’s offensive production has gotten, even given the fact that Betts is a top-five hitter by most metrics. Ohtani’s 1.108 OPS tops baseball by more than 70 points, his 115 total bases are 17 more than anyone else and he’s even got the lead in batting average, hitting an astonishing .361 in addition to all his power.

Plus, DH-only Ohtani is providing a lot of surplus value on the base–more than Betts at this moment in time. He’s got nine stolen bases and has only been caught once, putting him on pace for a 30-steal season. If he can hit 50 homers, steal 35 bases and top 400 total bases, Ohtani really can take home an MVP as a DH, even with the incredible output of his teammate at a more valuable position.