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          The Passans: 2024 MLB season awards, with a twist

          Aaron Judge and Juan Soto have dominated as a duo in New York. Did they take home a 2024 Passan Award for their work? New York Yankees/Getty Images

          With another two months until baseball writers name the Most Valuable Players, Cy Young Award winners and Rookies of the Year, now seems the perfect time for a far wider-ranging set of honors for Major League Baseball's 2024 season.

          The second Passan Awards build upon the inaugural prizes handed out to not only the best players in MLB but also those who did cool things. The purpose of these is to celebrate the most enjoyable elements of a season and recognize that even those who aren't the best of the best deserve acknowledgment.

          There are nevertheless some familiar names in the mix here, too, and the first two awards cover the game's crème de la crème rather well.

          Best duo

          Aaron Judge has been the best hitter in baseball this season, and based on bat alone, there's a good argument that Juan Soto ranks second. New York has an unquestionably impressive concentration of hitting excellence. But how impressive compared with other hitting duos throughout the years?

          The best pair of hitters ever in one lineup, based on average weighted runs created plus, is a familiar one: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Even nearly a century later, they are the prime example of a duo who thrive at the same time and provide the foundation for a huge competitive advantage.

          That's what these Yankees have with Judge and Soto. Either is the sort of hitter who can carry a team throughout a series -- and the kind of player a team should cherish as long as he's around. Thinking about what this lineup looks like without Soto in there, it's obvious why it's so imperative to re-sign him this winter.

          Soto slash line is .287/.417/.576. He has the second-highest wOBA and wRC+ in MLB. He has hit 40 home runs and driven in well over 100. And Judge is even better in every single category. Individually, each is tremendous. Together, they are an all-time force.

          Thing we'll still be talking about in 50 years

          The closest facsimile to what Shohei Ohtani is doing this year comes from more than a half-century ago in a different sport. For as long as he had been a professional basketball player, Wilt Chamberlain was the greatest scoring machine the sport had ever seen. Some, in fact, criticized him for the gaudy numbers he put up, accusing Chamberlain of playing selfish basketball. So going into the 1967-68 season, he set a goal: He wanted to lead the NBA in assists, just to see if he could. He was Wilt Chamberlain. Of course he could, and of course he did.

          Even if Ohtani doesn't reach 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in the same season, what he's doing this year is up there with the most impressive things he has accomplished. No one could have conceived that this enormous human being would be -- could be -- anywhere in the realm of 50 stolen bases in a season, particularly when he's rehabilitating a reconstructed elbow. And yet that's precisely why Ohtani has focused on his base stealing this year: He likes adding as much value as possible to his team, and never again, as long as he's contributing on both the hitting and pitching sides, will Ohtani find another opportunity to attempt this.

          As nonsensical as our obsession with round numbers is, the simple notion of a 50-homer hitter being fleet enough of foot to thieve 50 bases is incongruous. No such creature can possibly be built for it. Then along comes Ohtani, reminding us that he majors in world warping. Set limitations at your peril.

          Most-hyped phenom

          Nobody since Ohtani has arrived in the major leagues with more hype than Paul Skenes upon his May 11 debut. All he has done since is pitch better than almost anyone in the major leagues. The only pitcher with a case is Chris Sale, and Skenes stacks up evenly against him.

          Because of Sale's excellence in six starts before Skenes' call-up, he's going to run away with the NL Cy Young this season. A full season of Skenes likely would have put him in contention. It would've also solidified his Rookie of the Year case, nullifying the full-season arguments his opponents carry. Because Skenes wasn't with the team Opening Day, though, the Pirates won't reap an additional first-round draft pick through the MLB prospect promotion incentive, for winning Rookie of the Year or finishing top three in Cy Young voting.

          Instead, they'll simply appreciate that not a single one of the 21 starts Skenes has made qualifies as bad. His worst outing came Aug. 10, when the Dodgers scored four runs against him in six innings. Skenes has allowed three earned runs twice, two earned runs six times and one run seven times. He has shut his opponent out five times.

          Skenes could have been intimidated by the pressure, overwhelmed by the media, humbled by the hitters. Nope, nope, nope. When he's on the mound, Skenes is the one who's in charge. He's everything he's supposed to be -- and more.

          Breakout player

          Two other NL rookies have grabbed our attention by making names for themselves as the season has progressed. This is a choose-your-adventure award. Either way, the winner will be named Jackson.

          Path A: You go to San Diego, where you meet a 21-year-old shortstop. Except he's not a shortstop anymore; the organization doesn't have any outfielders, so he's playing center field for the first time in his life. And he's actually pretty good at it. But his glove is nothing compared with his bat. First he hit a walk-off home run off Mason Miller, who might be the nastiest closer in baseball. Then he hit a game-tying ninth-inning home run off Blake Treinen, who's quite filthy himself. He did the game-tying ninth-inning homer thing again. And then again. And one more time, except in the eighth inning. When he missed belting walk-off homers, he hit another one of those. The last time anyone 21 or younger hit six home runs to tie or give his team the lead in the eighth inning or later was 1956, when a guy named Frank Robinson did it. Now, this isn't to suggest that Jackson Merrill is going to be a no-doubt, first-ballot, inner-tier Hall of Famer. But he's off to one hell of a start.

          Path B: You go to Milwaukee. There you meet a 20-year-out outfielder. That's not the only 20 you're going to see from him this season. Despite a rough start -- he was hitting .207/.251/.323 on June 1 -- he managed to exceed 20 home runs. And 20 stolen bases. Never before has a player gone 20/20 before his 21st birthday. The last time a 20-year-old played full time for the Brewers it was Gary Sheffield, who finished his career with 509 home runs. The time before that it was Robin Yount, a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Jackson Chourio has a long way to go to have a career like either of them, but he's off to one hell of a start, too.

          AL MVP runner-up

          This award went to Corey Seager last year to ensure he received credit for a magnificent season overshadowed by Ohtani. Well, as awesome as Seager was, Bobby Witt Jr. is putting up almost identical offensive numbers to him this season -- and is significantly better than him defensively and on the basepaths.

          Witt is threatening to exceed 10 wins above replacement, a rare number for any player, let alone one who doesn't win MVP. There's a compelling argument to be made that Witt warrants the MVP ahead of Judge. The problem is Judge's season plus voters' predilection for favoring offensive production above all else. At 24, Witt has plenty of time to stock his trophy case in the coming years. His time will arrive soon enough. For now, he can take solace in this prestigious honor.

          Catch of the year

          This has been the year of home run robberies. Atlanta's Michael Harris going over the center-field fence in Philadelphia to rob Austin Hays and stun the hostile crowd at Citizens Bank Park. Cubs rookie Pete Crow-Armstrong fighting off an interfering fan to retrieve a would-be homer at Dodger Stadium. Milwaukee's Sal Frelick braining himself against the fence to rob Corbin Carroll. Outfielders have gotten exceptional at timing leaps and stealing homers.

          And because it's so difficult to differentiate among catches, context matters. Which brings us to the ninth inning in Chicago on Aug. 28. The Chicago White Sox, trying to avoid losing more games than any team in the 125-year history of baseball's modern era, trailed the Texas Rangers 4-3. With two runners on, White Sox first baseman Andrew Vaughn lofted a fly ball toward the left-field fence at Guaranteed Rate Field. As it flew, it looked as if it was going to be the White Sox's first walk-off win in more than four months.

          All the while, Travis Jankowski moved with purpose toward the ball. He started with long strides. As he approached the wall, Jankowski stutter-stepped his legs, hopped off his left foot, reached across his body over the fence and yanked the ball back to secure a 4-3 victory for Texas. Chicago's relievers in the bullpen couldn't believe it. Fans who had their arms raised in triumph lowered them in pain. The White Sox lost their sixth straight game that night. The streak would eventually stretch to 12 games, all because Jankowski made the Catch of the Year.

          Nastiest pitch

          Last year for this award, I sorted through hundreds of filthy pitches -- sweepers with unseemly bend, sinkers with calamitous arm side run and changeups that drop as if they were unplugged from the matrix. There were hundreds more this year that were every bit as good as last season's, but I didn't bother looking at them, because the moment I saw Los Angeles Angels rookie closer Ben Joyce blow a fastball past Tommy Edman at 105.5 mph, the nameplate on the award was ready to be etched.

          MLB's relationship with velocity is unhealthy, and the preponderance of arm injuries in the game speaks to that. Joyce himself is on the shelf for the remainder of the season with a shoulder impingement. So although there's cognitive dissonance in celebrating the very thing that might instead deserve condemnation, any human being launching a 5-ounce projectile upward of 106 mph is a nearly impossible feat. In a time when so many pitchers can throw 100-plus mph -- a mark that a decade ago was reserved for a rare few -- nobody else can reach Joyce's level of velocity. Only Aroldis Chapman, who holds the record at 105.8 mph, is even in Joyce's neighborhood.

          And it wasn't just that Joyce threw pure petrol. The location of the pitch -- at Edman's knees, on the inside corner, a strike even if he didn't swing through it -- was exceptional. The same went for Joyce's other two hardest pitches for strikes: 104.8 and 104.5 mph with which he dispatched Bobby Witt Jr. swinging.

          That's the thing about velo like Joyce's. It really, really plays. Hitters train to catch up to 100, and they can even figure out 102, but once a fastball reaches 105-106 mph, even the best in the world struggle.

          Game of the year

          About five minutes before first pitch between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers on April 30, a swarm of Africanized honeybees congregated on the netting behind home plate at Chase Field in Phoenix. The bees formed a tight ball around their queen and looked perfectly content to just watch some ball. The problem was, if a ball hit the net, it could have agitated them, potentially sending thousands of angry bees into a stadium full of people. The situation was untenable.

          An emergency call was placed. Matt Hilton, who manages Blue Sky Pest Control in the area and handles crises like this for a living, booked it to the stadium, put on his beekeeper suit, shocked the bees with a spray and retrieved them with a shop vac. About two hours after the ordeal started, the bees were gone. Arizona rewarded Hilton with the first pitch.

          The game, it turned out, would prove mighty dramatic even without the threat of bugs taking over a big league contest. Because of the delay, Arizona pivoted from its starter, Jordan Montgomery, to a bullpen game, and six pitchers buzzed through the Dodgers' lineup. Los Angeles did the same to the Diamondbacks, sending the game to extra innings, where, on the third pitch he saw, Arizona first baseman Christian Walker stung a walk-off home run to give Arizona a 4-3 win and a bee-autiful day in a season full of them.

          Individual performance of the year

          After signing with the San Francisco Giants only a week before Opening Day, Blake Snell's first six starts for the team had been a nightmare, and he had spent more time injured than he did on the mound. A year ago, Snell had ended the season on an all-time 23-game heater, posting a 1.20 ERA and winning the National League Cy Young Award, but that seemed like forever ago off this spring.

          He found his footing with five one-hit innings July 9 and followed with seven one-hit innings July 14 and a six-inning, no-run, 15-strikeout game July 27. When Snell took the mound Aug. 2 in Cincinnati, he had the look immediately. He struck out the side on 11 pitches in the first inning. He did it again in the fourth. Even though he had walked three batters by the fifth inning, his pitch count was under control, and hits weren't dropping. He finished the seventh, and then the eighth, something he had never done in any of his previous 202 career starts.

          Snell entered the ninth inning with 108 pitches. He needed four to strike out Santiago Espinal and one each to retire Jonathan India and Elly De La Cruz, and with that a two-time Cy Young winner who had never thrown a complete game made his first one count: a no-hitter, the best performance of 2024.

          Best out-Judging of Aaron Judge

          Judge is known for hitting the baseball extraordinarily hard. He leads MLB in average exit velocity this season. Directly behind him is Pirates center fielder Oneil Cruz, who, like Judge, takes every bit of his long frame (both are 6-foot-7) and leverages it to punish baseballs.

          There's a particular threshold, however, that even Judge struggles to reach: the 120-mph mark. Only once in his career has Judge hit a ball over 120: on a home run off Chris Tillman in 2017, his rookie season. Judge is one of only five players to reach 120-plus. He and former teammate Gary Sanchez have done it once, as has former NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr.

          The other two who have managed to pull it off multiple times? Exit-velocity king Giancarlo Stanton -- and 25-year-old Cruz. Never did Stanton do it twice in one day, though, as Cruz did May 21 against San Francisco. He blitzed a first-inning changeup off All-Star Logan Webb into right field at 120.4 mph. And then in the ninth, he turned around a 100 mph cutter from Camilo Doval at 121.5 mph, the hardest-hit ball in MLB this season. Only four balls -- three by Stanton, one by Cruz in 2022 -- have been hit harder since MLB's pitch-tracking era began in 2015.

          Biggest surprise

          Last year, the Kansas City Royals lost 106 games. Over the winter, they guaranteed around $100 million to sign seven free agents: right-handed starters Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha, outfielder Hunter Renfroe, utilitymen Garrett Hampson and Adam Frazier, and relievers Will Smith and Chris Stratton.

          Today, the Royals are 82-70. They are firmly in possession of the second wild card in the AL and have an outside shot at overtaking Cleveland atop the Central Division. They will play in the postseason for the first time since winning the World Series in 2015. They are the perfect example of what can happen when a team -- regardless of its market size -- has an owner commit to winning and backs it up with savvy front office maneuvering.

          In addition to urging general manager J.J. Picollo to add via free agency, Royals owner John Sherman greenlit the $288 million contract extension for Witt over the winter as well as a midseason budget expansion to acquire more talent at the trade deadline and via the waiver wire. The Royals have operated with a sense of urgency rarely seen among lower-revenue teams.

          And their targets have hit. Lugo was among the best signings of the winter and Wacha not far behind. Cole Ragans, acquired for Aroldis Chapman in June 2023, is a top-of-the-rotation starter. Witt is a superstar; Salvador Perez is bolstering his Hall of Fame case by the year; and Vinnie Pasquantino is a legitimate middle-of-the-order bat (and they very much miss him while he's out with a broken thumb). And with the work Matt Quatraro is doing in the dugout, the Royals could pull off the rare Manager of the Year/Executive of the Year double.

          The Royals might be a surprise, but they're certainly not a fluke.

          Biggest disappointment

          The Texas Rangers won the World Series in 2023, and for an encore, they decided to stink. This is particularly surprising because not only did they return a vast majority of their core players but they actually added one of the top prospects in baseball as well as two relief pitchers who wound up anchoring their bullpen. It is a reminder that baseball makes no sense and anyone who claims to understand it is a fool, a liar or both.

          So what happened? Take a look at the offense.

          The 2023 Rangers scored 881 runs. The 2024 Rangers are on pace to score 672 runs. Josh Jung missed a large chunk of this season with an injury, and Evan Carter has been out almost the entire year, but that does nothing to address the drastic regression from Adolis Garcia and Jonah Heim in particular.

          The Rangers' pitching staff is in a similar neighborhood to last year in runs allowed, and their defense remains among the five best in the game. Which makes 2025 a fascinating test to see who the Rangers really are. With Jacob deGrom rejoining the top of their rotation and Kumar Rocker somewhere in it, too, it's a good start on the pitching side. Ultimately next season's success will fall on the bats and will depend on which year -- 2023 or 2024 -- was the outlier.

          Move of the year

          The Atlanta Braves do plenty of things well. They have made six straight postseason trips, with a World Series title in that span. They have built the most enviable young core in baseball, almost all incredibly talented, locked up for the primes of their careers. They prioritize elite players. They have drafted and developed them, found them internationally, watched them blossom on the pitching side. This year, they traded for one.

          Of course, we didn't know it at the time. Chris Sale's previous five years had been something of a nightmare: flashes of extreme, best-in-the-game brilliance, only to be felled by a spell of injuries, to the point that he was wondering whether to return. He stayed healthy this season, and he's been the most dominant pitcher in the world. After finishing sixth, fifth, third, fourth, fifth, second and fourth in AL Cy Young voting, he is going to win the National League version this season in a runaway.

          It's a wonderful testament to Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos' willingness to take risks. Pitching health is hard. You have to believe something not only to trade Vaughn Grissom for Sale but then to extend him before he throws a pitch, adding a second guaranteed year and a club option on top of it. Furthermore, Boston sent $17 million to Atlanta to cover most of Sale's 2024 salary. By winning the Cy Young and finishing the year healthy, Sale will have his 2026 option guaranteed at $18 million -- giving him $56 million rather than the $27.5 million that was previously guaranteed and putting the cost for the Braves at $39 million over three years.

          Sale's success buoyed the Braves in the year their offense vanished -- much of that due to injury, some to regression. Sale was the constant. And as much as the Royals are due credit for adding Lugo and Wacha and the Padres with Jurickson Profar, the convergence of the Braves and Sale has been a dynamic match, and if Atlanta can get to October, he makes it a very dangerous team.

          Song of the year

          Considering New York Mets infielder Jose Iglesias is the only MLB player to release a single this year, he wins this category by default. Still, his song, "OMG," has become a bit of a utility player itself, being seen in sign form in dugout celebrations and pumping through speakers during postgame victory celebrations.

          These Mets are a likable team, and they deserve a likable song, and in "OMG," they have just that. A sampling of some lyrics, translated from Spanish to English:

          "I may be crazy, but not lazy"

          "May my wallet not go on a diet anymore"

          "May the bad tongue [gossip] not have a chance"

          "Oh my god"

          Best glove

          During the offseason, Carlos Santana was talking with his mother, Nuris Amador, and she asked him a question: What individual accomplishment have you not achieved that you would like to? Santana answered quickly: He wanted to win a Gold Glove.

          Good, his mom said. Then go do it.

          No longer was this goal just for himself. It was for his mom now, too. And she needed to be there with him every step of the way. So he reached out to Rawlings with a request: He wanted a pink first baseman's mitt with his mother's name stitched on the side. She was going to be there with him the entire way.

          Nearly six months later, that pink glove is worn and tattered, caked with dirt and the other sorts of nastiness that decorates leather after a season spent scooping low throws and picking hot shots. And by every indication, he's going to fulfill his goal. At 38 years old and in his 15th season, Santana leads American League first basemen in almost every major defensive metric, and he tops all first basemen in outs above average and fielding run value.

          Gold Glove voting by managers and coaches is underway, and if Santana wins, he'll be honored by Rawlings in November. Even if that happens, though, he knows deep down the most meaningful glove he'll have received in 2024 will have been a different color: pink.

          Biggest jump

          Washington Nationals rookie Jacob Young arrived relatively unheralded this spring and took over as the primary center fielder once the Nationals saw Eddie Rosario in center and realized that was going to be a bad idea. Instead, Washington got maybe the best defensive outfielder in baseball. At one particular aspect of defense, Young is so much better than absolutely everyone else, it should be treated like a gift: the jump he gets defensively when the bat hits the ball, as tracked by Statcast. His first move (the reaction) and next (the burst) are exceptionally quick, far beyond anything any of his peers are doing. Even though the routes Young takes are poor, the jumps are so quick they make up for any lost efficiency.

          Because of their quality, Young leads MLB with 20 outs above average, ranking ahead of other outfielders with multiple years of production, like Daulton Varsho, Jose Siri and Brenton Doyle.

          His bat isn't there yet, although his hefty stolen base total (32) has put him in position to score 73 runs in 138 games from almost exclusively the No. 9 hole. Defense is best measured over a larger sample, and if Young can continue to play the field like this, he'll be at worst a very good player and at best one with a ceiling near the top of the sport. He needs to really hit to reach those heights, and he might not, but the glove alone is a difference-maker -- as long as it gets a good jump.

          Best streak

          This was almost the Chicago White Sox, to be honest. This week they won three games in a row, and that's a lot for them. It's not the most they've had this season -- that's four -- but it's pretty close, and it comes after one of the most devastating years imaginable, and it's impressive to see a team that doesn't stop caring, even if the world long ago stopped caring about it. That's the sort of thing that actually makes the White Sox more interesting than any team playing like them should be. These are players who care.

          But the best streak is Luis Arraez's 141 consecutive plate appearances without a strikeout. The foremost hit artist of this time displayed S-tier bat control to go 37 days between punchouts. It's the most elegant display of what Arraez does well: He does not care about bat speed. He has the slowest in the league by 1 mph, and it just does not matter at all because he barrels the ball more than anyone. He has squared up 391 balls this season, ahead of Marcus Semien at 311, Francisco Lindor at 308 and Jose Ramirez at 301.

          During the streak, Arraez hit .386/.426/.455. He singled 44 times, doubled six times, homered once, drove in 13 and scored 22 runs in 30 games. He has the best hit tool in the game. Since Arraez's debut in 2019, he is batting .325. The next-best number is Freddie Freeman at .310, and then the retired Michael Brantley at .305, and after that there's not a single .300 hitter.

          Batting average isn't everything. But it's something. And when it's good, people pay attention and respect it. Arraez being Arraez is always delightful to see.