Can Anybody Catch Shohei Ohtani in the NL MVP Race?

Watch Can Anybody Catch Shohei Ohtani in the NL MVP Race? - SportsGrid on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Shohei Ohtani now back to pitching on the mound. He's a minus 550 favorite to win the NL MVP over

00:06Pete Crow Armstrong, Juan Soda, and Ronald Acuna Jr. For me, I even think Ohtani should be even a

00:11higher favorite than Aaron Judge right now because he's back to pitching here, and I just don't see

00:15Pete Crow Armstrong hitting 55 home runs, even if he plays in Wrigley, Mark. How are you playing

00:20out the National League field as opposed to the American League field? I would look at it this way,

00:27and this may surprise you, but if there's a world where Ronald Acuna leads the Atlanta Braves

00:36back to the postseason, given how poorly they've played to this point, it's going to garner a lot

00:43of attention for him. Granted, again, he missed the first month plus of the season, so he would have

00:49to have something approaching 40 home runs in about 120, right, 110 games, whatever it may be,

00:56that he would play, and when you extrapolate that, the analytic nerds will turn around and go,

01:00well, if he played 162, he would have had 65 home runs, and he would have driven on 157 runs,

01:06whatever it may be, and that's enough to sway the nerd portion of the voting base

01:10in his favor, but the Braves have to end up, you know, taking back the National League East,

01:16or at least at a minimum, not being the last wild card, being firmly in the postseason.

01:22That's a huge ask because I don't really trust the Braves to do it, but if, you know,

01:27obviously I'm not going to sit here and lay 550 on Shoei Otani, but to look at the guys that are

01:31sitting there, the only one that's appealing to me in reality is Ronald Acuna Jr. I don't think

01:37Soto's going to put together a good enough campaign, despite offensively, the numbers are not going

01:41to be pretty enough, particularly from a batting average standpoint that's going to hurt him.

01:44The two guys from the Cubs are going to cannibalize one another, and that just leaves Ronald Acuna

01:48is the one guy who can do something special and lead the Braves to the postseason.