Comparing the Players Choice Awards to BBWAA awards

Neither Freddie Freeman nor Julio Urías won the Players Choice Awards for which they were considered, though both finished in the top three for their respective honors.

Freeman was up for the National League Outstanding Player, given annually to the top position player in the league. It’s an award Freeman won in 2020, the same year he was voted National League MVP by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Freeman hit .325/.407/.511 with a 157 wRC+ in his first year with the Dodgers, and led the majors in hits (199) and doubles (47) while leading the NL in on-base percentage and runs scored (117), the latter tied with teammate Mookie Betts. Freeman was second in the NL in batting average, OPS (.918) and wRC+, the latter two behind only Paul Goldschmidt, who won the Players Choice Award.

The top three finishers for each Players Choice Award were revealed on October 27, except for American League Outstanding Player. That was limited to the obvious top two — Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, which no other player receiving five percent of the vote from fellow players.

In addition to the Outstanding Player in each league, there’s also an MLB Player of the Year award voted on by the players, which is league-wide. The top three finishers for that were Judge, Ohtani, and Goldschmidt. That Goldschmidt was the only NL player listed was a pretty good indication that he’d take home National League Outstanding Player honors, which he did.

On the pitching side, Julio Urías was among the top three finishers for NL Outstanding Pitcher, along with Marlins right-hander Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen of the D-backs.

Urías was magnificent this season, leading the NL with a 2.16 ERA while going 17-7 with 166 strikeouts in his 31 starts. He pitched 175 innings, which ranked 19th in the NL. He lost out to Alcantara, whose 228⅔ innings were not only 53⅔ (and 30.7 percent) more than Urías, but also 23⅔ more innings than any other pitcher in the majors.

Alcantara had a 2.28 ERA and 207 strikeouts in 32 starts, and his six complete games were four more than anyone else in the league.

While the players vote for the Players Choice Awards and the BBWAA votes for MVP and the Cy Young Award, the results have matched up more often than not. In the previous nine years, 14 of 18 Outstanding Players won MVP in their league, and 14 of 18 Outstanding Pitchers also won the Cy Young.

One of the Outstanding Players who didn’t win MVP was Giancarlo Stanton, who in 2014 lost the MVP to pitcher Clayton Kershaw. But Stanton finished second in MVP voting, the highest among position players, the group from which Outstanding Players are selected.

Here’s how the National League votes have gone in the last ten years.