SB Nation Reacts: MLB awards favorites

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Each week we ask questions of the most plugged-in Pittsburgh Pirates fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to join Reacts.

This week’s SB Nation Reacts survey deals with the early-season favorites for the major MLB awards of MVP and Cy Young for both leagues.

First, we’ll take a look at the American League MVP. Here’s the results:

As you can see, Vladimir Guerrero is the prohibitive favorite among the fans, while last year’s winner Shohei Ohtani is a distant second. I might lean towards Ohtani again, though it’s been since Miguel Cabrera in 2012 and 2013 since anyone won back-to-back MVP awards, and the novelty of Ohtani’s two-way play may have worn off a little.

Here are the NL results:

Things are a little closer in the NL race, but we still have a big favorite in Juan Soto. He led the majors in batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage and OPS two seasons ago, and though he’s hitting just .277 so far this year, I’m sure he’ll be heating up soon.

Next is the AL Cy Young award. Here are those results:

A much closer poll here. Justin Verlander already has two Cy Youngs under his belt, including 2011 when he also won the MVP for the Detroit Tigers, but he missed all of 2021 following Tommy John surgery. He’s off to a good start this year so far. Let’s see if he can keep it up.

His main competition according to fans is Shane Bieber, who won the award in 2020 but who also missed a fair amount of time in 2021.

Lastly, we have our NL Cy Young favorite:

Walker Buehler is coming off a 16-4 season for one of baseball’s top teams in which he finished fourth in Cy Young voting, so it’s fair to say he’ll be back in the mix this year, and you can never count out three-time winner Max Scherzer, who’s been one of the top pitchers in baseball for a decade now and it one of my personal favorites to watch on the mound.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to sign up for Reacts to get a survey sent to your inbox.

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