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It’s to the point where it doesn’t matter what type of numbers any other American League player puts up Shohei Ohtani is going to be the Most Valuable Player and he’ll probably win the award unanimously.

Last night Ohtani was the starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels as well as hitting 2nd in the batting order. As a pitcher Ohtani had a good outing. He pitched 6 1/3 innings. He gave up 1 run on 4 hits while walking 2 and striking out 10.

As a hitter Ohtani went 3 for 3 with 2 RBI’s and a walk. Two of his three hits were solo home runs and he accounted for half of the Angels hits in the game as Los Angeles only tallied 6 hits in the game.

As a pitcher Ohtani has made 16 starts this season, He has a 7-3 record with an ERA of 3.02 over 95 1/3rd innings. He’s struck out 127 batters while walking 39.

As a hitter Ohtani is currently has a batting average of .304 while leading all of Major League Baseball with 28 home runs and 64 RBI. Matt Olson is the current National League leader in home runs and RBIs with 25 and 60.

At this point you have to wonder what other American League player actually deserve consideration for the MVP award.

You’d Bo Bichette belongs on an MVP ballot as he is leading the American League in batting average right now at .323. There are a couple of Tampa Bay Rays players Randy Arozarena and Yandy Diaz who are ranked highly statistically. It should help both Arozarena and Diaz that they play for one of if not the best team in all of baseball. Luis Robert of the White Sox has also put up some good numbers so far, but unfortunately for him the White Sox have been one of the bigger disappointments so far this season.

Now even though there’s a little over half of a season to play it’s doubtful that anyone would be able to put up the type of numbers needed to surpass Ohtani as the leader for MVP. It appears as though the only thing that can stop Ohtani from claiming his second MVP award in the past three season would be an injury that cost him to miss a lot of games.

Ohtani did have some injury issues in his first three seasons with the Angels, but in the past two seasons he’s stayed healthy. When Ohtani won the MVP award in 2021, he played in 155 games and last season when he finished 2nd in the MVP voting to Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees he played in 157 games. This season Ohtani has played in 79 of the Angels 81 games.

The one thing that I’ve yet to mention with the great season that Ohtani is having is the fact that he’ll be a free agent at the end of this season.

There is still a lot of speculation about what a contract for Ohtani might look like, but there was a rumor out their early this week. There was a report that the Colorado Rockies would be interested in signing Ohtani this off season and the report mentioned that the Rockies would offer him something like a 3-year $300 million dollar deal.

That would actually be double the salary that most of the rumors had him receiving. A lot of the talk before this season started was that we’d see Ohtani get a 10-year $500 million dollar contract from one of the big market teams.

I guess will have to wait and see how the rest of the season goes for Ohtani and where and what he ends up signing for this coming off season.

Alright, let me know who you’d have on your American League MVP ballot right now. Also chime in what you think about that rumored offer Ohtani might get from Colorado.

As always don’t forget to look for me on Twitter, I’m @Burketime.