I didn't get a ballot this year -- shocker -- which means I get to comment on all six of the player races (I don't care about Manager of the Year, lacking any rational means to evaluate them, which puts me in the uncomfortable position of stating an opinion with scant or nonexistent evidence to back me up).
Here's how I would vote if I had a ballot for each of the six major awards.
AL MVP
1. Mike Trout
2. Mookie Betts
3. Jose Ramirez
4. Alex Bregman
6. Matt Chapman
10. Jose Altuve
Yes, Trout over Mookie, even though Betts is deserving and it would certainly be satisfying to see one of the game's best players and best stories walk home with the hardware.
Trout and Betts have identical slugging percentages as I write this, while Trout has a higher OBP by 26 points, and he plays in a tougher home park than Betts does, especially for power. They've been equally valuable on the bases. Betts' higher WAR values come down to their defensive metrics and the positional adjustment required for a center fielder (Trout) and for a right fielder (Betts), which is about five runs.
My take, however, is that if you put Trout in right, he'd be at least Betts' equal on defense -- and Betts might be the same in center if given the time to learn it -- but that if you could magically equalize the two players' defensive profiles, they'd be very close -- enough to tilt this to Trout. The Angels superstar is actually having his best offensive season, with an OPS+ of 199 (top 50 all time, going back to 1901), and a wRC+ of 193 (second-best since Barry Bonds stopped shattering records in 2004, behind only Bryce Harper in 2015).
Ramirez is clearly third; the next three guys could go in any order, and the last three could as well, with Simmons still the best defensive player in the game and already one of the 100 most valuable defenders in MLB history at age 29.
NL MVP
1. Jacob deGrom
2. Max Scherzer
4. Javier Baez
7. Lorenzo Cain
9. Aaron Nola
10. Matt Carpenter
I expect Yelich to win the award, given the longstanding historical bias against pitchers in MVP voting -- to say nothing of writers playing games with their ballots to support hometown players -- but deGrom has deStroyed [sic] the field this year any way you measure his value.
I have Baez higher than his stats might indicate, because he's been asked to play three positions on a regular basis and been average at all of them, giving the team tremendous flexibility and some hard-to-quantify value from giving them more use from a single roster spot. He could be anywhere from fourth to seventh on this ballot. Also, Patrick Corbin is good and about to get paid this offseason.
AL Cy Young
1. Justin Verlander
2. Chris Sale
3. Gerrit Cole
4. Trevor Bauer
5. Blake Snell
I admit it would be fun to see Snell win -- after all, I picked him as one of my breakout candidates this spring -- but Verlander has the better strikeout rate, the better walk rate, and a much higher IP total. Sale is the curious case here -- he won't even qualify for the ERA title due to a shoulder injury, but on a per-batter basis, he's been the best starter in the AL, good enough that he's delivered more value to the Red Sox than other pitchers who've thrown 20+ more innings have delivered to their teams.
NL Cy Young
1. Jacob deGrom
2. Max Scherzer
3. Patrick Corbin
4. Aaron Nola
This was close for a little while, but deGrom has pulled away. He leads the majors in ERA and FIP, and is one of just eight pitchers to reach 200 innings this year. He and Snell could become the fifth and sixth pitchers since 2009 to post ERA+ figures of 200 or higher. Freeland's advanced stats don't put him top five, but I gave him a bump for the difficulty of pitching in Coors Field; his ERA right now of 2.84 would be the lowest full-season ERA in franchise history, bested only by Marvin Freeman in strike-shortened 1994.
AL ROY
This shouldn't even be a debate -- Ohtani produced 3.6 fWAR and 3.8 rWAR this year when you combine his bat and his pitching, and did so in less than a full season of playing time in either role (although 300 AB and 50 innings is, taken together, something like a full workload). He should win this with a unanimous vote; no one else is close, not even Torres, whom I once ranked as the No. 2 prospect in baseball and still believe is a future star, and whose numbers took a small hit because he spent the year playing a new position.
I expect Tampa's Joey Wendle to get some votes, but he's 28 years old and essentially positionless. The production we saw from younger players like Andujar and Torres is much more impressive given the context of their ages.
NL ROY
1. Ronald Acuña Jr.
2. Juan Soto
The Acuña/Soto race was neck and neck for a while, but Acuña had a monstrous August -- by Fangraphs' Batting Runs, he was the most productive NL outfielder that month -- and pulled away. The real debate here might be Soto vs. Bader, which comes down to whether you think Soto is really a bad defensive outfielder (I'm not convinced) and Bader a plus one (probably true). You could flip those two and I wouldn't mind.
Walker Buehler, Brian Anderson, and Jack Flaherty all had good cases -- but I'm not going to support the reported proposal to expand the Rookie of the Year ballots. We've had plenty of years where finding three decent rookies to fill out the existing spots was difficult, and adding spots will just increase the noise in the results.