MVP Vote 2020: Dodgers’ Mookie Betts in the NL’s Top Three

Muki BatesThe first season with The Dodgers Couldn’t be better from a team point of view. Individual awards could soon follow, especially since Bates officially became among the top three for the National League Player of the Year award.

Bates finished in the top three in the voting by the American Baseball Writers Association for NL’s Best Player, alongside Brave First man base Freddy Freeman And the parents Third base man Mane Machado, With the winner announced on Thursday Nov 12 at 3 PM PDT on the MLB Network.

If Betts wins this 2020 award, the 2018 American League MVP will join Frank Robinson as the only player to have won an MVP award in both leagues.

Bates hit .292 / .366 / .562 with 16 points at home in his first season with the Dodgers, scoring 47 points in 55 games. He led NL in Baseball-Reference WAR (3.4) and finished second in FanGraphs WAR (3.0), behind Freeman. Bates reached the National League Golden Glove Finals in the right field, having won the MLS Gold Gloves in the previous four seasons.

Obtained from Red socks In February, Betts was the last piece in the Dodgers Championship puzzle, adding the dynamic star that helped put a team that had averaged over 100 wins in the previous three seasons to the top, and had their first World Championship For the franchise at 32 years old.

“Mookie is incredible. He’s a great baseball player who does everything very well, and everybody’s talking about him,” Clayton Kershaw He said after the world championships. “I think he strives to be perfect, strives to be perfect every time. That focus and that consistency, I don’t know. How do Much better than she made the other players in this club, but I know she did. “

His overall match was on display in the post-season period, when he hit .296 / .378 / .493 with two home runs and scored 15 times in 18 matches. He also stole six bases in six attempts, including four during the World Series, and spotlighted a game-changer in each of the NLCS’s last three matches, helping the Dodgers wipe out a 3-1 series deficit to Atlanta.

“When we got it, my expectations were high.” Andrew Friedman, the chief of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, said the night the Dodgers won the World Series, he somehow said he managed to find a space higher than that, and bypass it. Enough about the baseball player, and the way he makes everyone around him better. It’s hard to imagine we’re sitting here right now without him. “

If Betts wins an NL MVP award this season, he’ll join Cody Bellinger As the second time the Dodgers would claim first consecutive honors, alongside catcher Roy Campanella in 1955 and shooter Don Newcombe in 1956.

At the very least, Bates will join his current team-mates Bellinger (2019 winner), Clayton Kershaw (Winner 2014), and Corey Seeger (2016, 3rd place) as a recent Dodgers to finish the top three in the NL MVP vote.