2023 MLB Predictions for MVP, Cy Young and Every Major Award Winner

If you want to know which players and coaches will win the major awards for the 2023 Major League Baseball season, you have two options.

Wait patiently, or take our word for it.

Ahead are our predictions for who'll be taking home the five biggest pieces of hardware for the American League and National League: Comeback Player of the Year, Manager of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player.

What went into making these picks? Oh, a little of this and a little of that, but mostly readings of various statistical tea leaves and a whole bunch of wild guesses.

The focus will mainly be on our picks to win each award, though we'll be dropping plenty of other names along the way, including our second choices for each award.

Let's get one thing straight: there are a lot of candidates for this award in the American League this year. Chris Sale. Joey Gallo. Lucas Giolito. Javier Báez and Eduardo Rodriguez. Really, the list goes on and on.

But we must be suckers for shiny spring training performances, because right now it's Anthony Rendon who has our full attention.

If it feels like it was forever ago that Rendon was one of MLB's 10 best position players and a postseason hero to boot, well, injuries will do that. Especially when combined with poor production. That's been the 32-year-old's lot over the last two seasons, as hip and wrist surgeries have limited him to 105 games in which he managed just 0.9 rWAR.

Yet it was in good health that Rendon reported to Angels camp this spring and, hoo boy, has he looked it in Cactus League action. In 13 games, he's hit at .452/.514/.774 with six extra-base hits and eight runs driven in.

There's an inherent danger in reading too much into spring training results, but these seem reasonably legit. Rendon has struck out (5) only once more than he's walked (4), while hitting the ball at an average of 91.8 mph. Basically, he's looked like Anthony Rendon again.

Second Choice: LHP Chris Sale, Boston Red Sox

Elsewhere on the topic of shiny spring training performances, we want to let Colorado Rockies fans that we do see that Kris Bryant has also been teasing a huge comeback in the Cactus League.

But, come on, the NL Comeback Player of the Year is Fernando Tatis Jr.'s to lose.

He certainly has a lot to come back from. He missed the first half of 2022 after having surgery to repair a broken wrist that he sustained in an offseason motorcycle accident, and then the second half after he was suspended 80 games for performance-enhancing drugs. Then there was a shoulder surgery. And another wrist surgery.

Still, it's hard to bet against a guy who's still only 24 years old and whose first 273 games yielded a 160 OPS+, 81 home runs, 52 stolen bases and 13.6 rWAR. It also helps that the former shortstop has looked solid in right field and that he's gotten hot at the plate with nine hits in his last 16 at-bats.

Tatis still has 20 games left on his suspension, so he won't be eligible to rejoin the Padres until April 20. All the same, it should surprise nobody if his Comeback Player of the Year tour also results in such accolades as an All-Star selection and even MVP votes.

Second Choice: RF Kris Bryant, Colorado Rockies

Here's the thing about the Manager of the Year: it's hard enough to assess which managers are the best in the moment, much less ahead of time.

On account of how both have won the award multiple times, the easy thing to do would be to shrug and tab either Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash or Cleveland Guardians skipper Terry Francona. But that would be boring, so let's talk about John Schneider.

Though this will be his first full season in charge of the Blue Jays, he doesn't so much have to prove anything as keep doing what worked in 2022. Upon taking over after Charlie Montoyo was sacked in July, Schneider led the Jays to a 46-28 record.

Coincidence? More like culture. Schneider's leadership purportedly strikes the perfect balance, with now-former Blue Jay Ross Stripling saying last October: "He's a good mix of leader but also being one of the guys, but also being able to hold guys accountable."

What would really help Schneider's Manager of the Year cause is if the Blue Jays unseat the New York Yankees in the AL East. That's firmly in the realm of "doable." The Jays now have a strong defense to go with their powerful offense and deep pitching, while the Yankees are a top-heavy club that's already having injury trouble.

Second Choice: Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay Rays

Meanwhile in the National League, there were six straight first-time winners for the Manager of the Year before newly hired New York Mets skipper Buck Showalter crashed the party to win it for the fourth time last year.

Clearly, the stage is set for Bob Melvin to also win his fourth Manager of the Year in 2023.

The Padres skipper gives off a certain energy that also comes from Showalter and Francona but not many other managers. They just get it. Speaking specifically of Melvin, he gets that there are times when anger works, but that it's mostly beneficial to be calm, cool, collected and, above all, communicative.

"He wants everyone to know where he's at and what he's thinking and why he's making decisions, rather than us sit here and question those things and wonder why the hell would he make this move or why would he do that," starter Joe Musgrove said last season. "He comes in and explains it."

Melvin is a Manager of the Year candidate simply on these merits, and then there's how his Padres are in prime position to fully slay the dragon in the NL West that is the Los Angeles Dodgers. Last year's Padres had the pleasure of knocking a 111-win iteration of the Dodgers out of the playoffs, and now this year's Padres are favored to win the division.

Second Choice: David Ross, Chicago Cubs

It's oh-so-tempting to give in to recency bias and proclaim Masataka Yoshida, whose $90 million deal with the Boston Red Sox took a ton of heat, as the man to beat for the AL Rookie of the Year after he dominated for Japan in the World Baseball Classic.

But if the AL Rookie of the Year is going to come out of the AL East, it's more likely to be a Baltimore Oriole. Possibly in the form of Grayson Rodriguez, but more probably in that of Gunnar Henderson.

If the question is what position he is, the most appropriate answer is "yes." He figures to mostly play third base, but he also has major league experience at shortstop and second base and minor league experience at first base.

And then there's the main reason Henderson, who's only 21, is coming into 2023 as our No. 2 overall prospect: he can really hit. He put up a .946 OPS in the minors last season, and hiding underneath the more modest .788 OPS he posted in 34 games with the big club was the league's best hard-hit rate after Aug. 31.

If you think we're confident in Henderson, you should get a load of his ZiPS projections. They call for him to match Ronald Acuña Jr., who's notably healthy for the first time in two years, for wins above replacement.

Second Choice: LF Masataka Yoshida, Boston Red Sox

Speaking of recency bias, Jordan Walker is right there as the easy pick for the NL Rookie of the Year. All he did this spring was force his way on to the St. Louis Cardinals roster by slamming eight extra-base hits in 19 games.

Unfortunately for Walker, though, some things simply make it hard to say no to Corbin Carroll.

His ranking as MLB.com's No. 2 prospect behind only Henderson? Yup, that. His 1.000-plus OPSes from the minors last year and in spring training this year? Yup, those as well. The fact that he's already signed a $111 million contract with the Diamondbacks? That definitely doesn't hurt.

It's perhaps also fair to accuse us of being suckers for Carroll's speed, but, well, is there anyone who isn't? At 30.7 feet per second, he was the fastest runner in the majors during the 32 games he played with Arizona in 2022.

Especially in an environment that's been redesigned to encourage action on the basepaths, the 22-year-old Carroll will steal bases and score runs in bunches as long as his plus hit tool does its part to get him on base consistently. Because he's also seen as a plus defender, his general profile is something like "super-charged Steven Kwan."

Second Choice: RF Jordan Walker, St. Louis Cardinals

It was hard to argue against Justin Verlander as the rightful winner of his third AL Cy Young Award last year. He did, after all, win 18 of his 22 decisions and lead all of MLB with a 1.75 ERA.

But, just sayin', Dylan Cease beat Verlander out for the rWAR lead among American League pitchers.

Even setting aside the ugly 7.31 ERA he's put up this spring, the best argument against Cease as a Cy Young contender for 2023 is that he walks too many guys. He indeed leads all pitchers in free passes since 2020, which is not the kind of behavior typically associated with any kind of good pitching, much less the award-winning variety.

So hard was it to actually hit Cease in 2022, however, that he had the lowest expected batting average of any pitcher who had 450 balls put in play. That was mostly the doing of a slider that had a 43.3 whiff percentage and was ultimately good for a league-best minus-36 run value.

Cease, 27, had yet another dominant weapon by the end of 2022, as the season's final month saw his rising four-seamer higher benefit from a generally higher location pattern. The result was a 1.95 ERA that looks like a mighty fine springboard for 2023.

Second Choice: RHP Cristian Javier, Houston Astros

Do not envy us for having to pick just one pitcher here. From Verlander to Max Scherzer to Sandy Alcantara to Corbin Burnes to Aaron Nola to Julio Urías, the field for the 2023 NL Cy Young Award is impossibly stacked with name-brand aces.

But instead of one of them, we're going to make it 2-for-2 in mustachioed gents being honored as the best pitchers of their respective leagues.

In this case, Spencer Strider. He was as dominant as anyone in the 20 starts he made between May 30 and Sep. 18 of 2022, posting a 2.77 ERA with 165 strikeouts against only 34 walks and 72 hits over 107.1 innings.

The 24-year-old's weakness ought to be that he's a mere two-pitch pitcher, but one of those pitches is a four-seam fastball that has a strong case as the best in MLB today. It helps that he chucks it at an average of 98.2 mph with rising action, and likewise that he preaches and practices vertical approach angle.

What made us think twice about tabbing Strider for the NL Cy Young Award is that he'll need to go far beyond the 131.2 innings he pitched last year. But then again, maybe not as far as 200 innings. If Verlander could win a Cy Young with 175 innings last year, a similar mark may be good enough for Strider this year.

Second Choice: RHP Corbin Burnes, Milwaukee Brewers

Aaron Judge legitimately had one of the best seasons of all-time in 2022, and not just because he set a new American League record with 62 home runs. By going over 11 fWAR, he went where only 13 other modern hitters had gone before.

So how was Judge not chosen unanimously for the AL MVP? Shohei Ohtani. That's how.

As amazing as the 28-year-old was in his MVP-winning season in 2021, he was arguably even better in 2022. Sure, his offensive output dropped from a 157 OPS+ and 46 home runs to a 145 OPS+ and 34 homers, but he also lowered his ERA by darn near a full run from 3.18 to 2.33.

There is some concern that the pitch timer will affect Ohtani more than most pitchers, but he otherwise stands to be a beneficiary of the bigger bases and the shift ban. To boot, he'll get full use out of a sinker that was instrumental in him posting a 1.00 ERA over his last seven starts of 2022.

Unless Judge has another historic season, maybe the only thing that can stop Ohtani from winning the AL MVP again is if the Angels give in to popular demand and trade him. But good luck convincing Arte Moreno to go along with the idea, and then there's the other reason such a trade is unlikely: this Angels team actually looks pretty good.

Second Choice: CF Julio Rodríguez, Seattle Mariners

Pick a power-speed guy. Any power-speed guy. Tatis. Acuña. Trea Turner. Mookie Betts. Yeah, they're all obvious candidates for the NL MVP.

But with all respect to them, we're going to take this opportunity to climb back aboard The Juan Soto Hype Train.

Remember when he came out of 2021 with back-to-back OBP titles, a career .981 OPS and a reputation as the modern Ted Williams? Those were good times. Certainly better than the ones that followed in 2022, wherein Soto was still good but never quite as dominant and, indeed, increasingly cool as the season went along. He finished with a career-low .853 OPS.

That Soto, still just 24, is nonetheless projected to once again be the NL's best hitter in 2023 makes sense just in the abstract. Even as he cooled off in 2022, he was still in the 99th percentile for xwOBA. And besides, you could hardly blame the guy if he was distracted from having spent much of the season at the center of historic trade sweepstakes.

As to non-abstract matters, Soto has sure looked like a man on a mission this spring, posting a 1.600 OPS in spring training and a 1.500 OPS for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic. The mission: be Juan Soto again.

Second Choice: RF Ronald Acuña Jr., Atlanta

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.