Albert Pujols<\/a>, had done it. So too had Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial, Jimmie Foxx, Mike Schmidt and Alex Rodriguez.<\/p>\nOnly Bonds had surpassed that total. He won three MVPs in a four-year span with the Pittsburgh Pirates early in his career (1990-93), then four straight (2001-04) during the height of his powers with the San Francisco Giants.<\/p>\n
What Ohtani has done in his last five seasons, in which he has collected all four of his MVPs, rivals those stretches as perhaps the most dominant run MLB has seen.<\/p>\n
There was his breakout campaign in 2021, when he proved his two-way capabilities could translate to the majors by amassing 46 home runs and 100 RBIs as a hitter, and a 3.18 ERA with 156 strikeouts as a pitcher. There was his encore in 2023, when he followed up a runner-up finish to Aaron Judge the previous year by posting his best offensive numbers (an MLB-high 44 home runs, MLB-leading 1.066 OPS and first .300 batting average) even in a year cut short by injuries.<\/p>\n
Since signing with the Dodgers, Ohtani has kept it going.<\/p>\n
Even without pitching last year, he won his third unanimous MVP by achieving MLB\u2019s first 50-homer, 50-steal season while also setting career highs with 130 RBIs and a .310 batting average. That made him the first primary designated hitter to claim the honor, and he joined Frank Robinson as the second player to win MVP in both leagues.<\/p>\n
This year there was once again little drama in the voting, as Ohtani edged fellow finalists Schwarber and Juan Soto of the New York Mets, who finished second and third, respectively.<\/p>\n
Given that Ohtani will return to a more normal pitching schedule next year, he almost certainly will enter 2026 as the MVP favorite once more. He will try to match another Bonds mark by winning the award in four consecutive years.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, replicating that feat felt borderline impossible.<\/p>\n
For Ohtani, however, history keeps coming with no end in sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0When it came to Major League Baseball\u2019s history of the most valuable player award, there used to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":377189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[181227,2746,51380,1582,276,2442,181228,5949,2961,224,5337,1699,592,8328,1311,5950,4712,2450,6620,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-377188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-22-year-career","9":"tag-barry-bonds","10":"tag-batting-average","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-dodgers","14":"tag-fourth-mvp-award","15":"tag-home-run","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-losangeles","19":"tag-mvp","20":"tag-national-league","21":"tag-ohtani","22":"tag-philadelphia","23":"tag-season","24":"tag-shohei-ohtani","25":"tag-thursday","26":"tag-time","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}