Now in the NL, Ohtani can chase Frank Robinson for MVP history

Now that he has moved from the American League to the National League, if Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers wins an MVP award while wearing Dodger blue, he will join the one and only one player in baseball history to have won MVP awards in both leagues.

That player is former Oriole Frank Robinson, who won the NL MVP with Cincinnati in 1961 and the AL award in his first year with the Orioles in 1966 when he both hit for the Triple Crown and led the Orioles to their first World Series championship.

But oddsmakers say Ohtani is not the favorite for the 2024 NL MVP. Atlanta outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr., the 2023 winner, is. SportsBetting.ag released early MVP odds on Wednesday and listed Acuna at 3-1 and Ohtani at 6-1 to win in the NL. Ohtani and his two new teammates are the second, third and fourth betting favorites. Mookie Betts is at 7-1 with the Dodgers Freddie Freeman at 9-1.

In 2023, Acuna produced the first 40-70 season in MLB history. He hit .337/.416/.596/1.012 with 41 homers, 73 steals, 149 runs and 106 RBIs.

Ohtani won the AL MVP honor this year while with the Angels and it was the first time both winners were unanimously selected. Each got all 30 first-place votes. Acuna is the first player born in Venezuela to win the NL award. Two other Venezuelan-born players were winners in the AL, Miguel Cabrera (2012-13) and Jose Altuve (2017).

Here are the early odds for AL MVP with two Orioles listed tied as the seventh betting favorites. And two Yankees topping the list.

Aaron Judge - 5/1
Juan Soto - 6/1
Corey Seager - 8/1
Yordan Alvarez - 9/1
Julio Rodriguez - 11/1
Kyle Tucker - 14/1
Adley Rutschman - 16/1
Gunnar Henderson - 16/1

The two O’s were in the top ten of the 2023 voting with Henderson finishing eighth and Rutschman ninth.

Despite his fourth-place finish in the AL Cy Young vote, the Orioles’ Kyle Bradish is among those right now listed at 25-1 to win the 2024 award along with Dylan Cease, Joe Ryan, Logan Gilbert, Max Scherzer and Shane Bieber. Seven pitchers have better odds including the Yankees Gerrit Cole the favorite at 5-1 with Framber Valdez and Kevin Gausman at 6-1.

With pitchers, more demand than supply: Everyone is always looking for pitching. That is pretty much true and in the sport of big league baseball, you can never have enough pitching.

But what happens when demand does not meet supply – whether it is in free agent pitching or via trades? The O’s Mike Elias was asked that question during the recent Winter Meetings.

“It is a perennial thing I think, especially in the last 20, 25 years when guys have been throwing as hard and it seems like injury rates are up and the demand outstrips the supply. I think it puts a lot of emphasis on what you are doing in player development. In Baltimore, we have done a lot of work to have a pitching pipeline that is starting to get some commendations from Baseball America or whatever. We are pleased to see that because we need to lean on you know getting pitchers from the amateur level maybe with some lower picks and coaching them up into guys that we can use. Because there is not enough pitching to go around, quality pitching, on the free agent market in any given year.”

And we should not have to say this but to cut off the comments saying I am trying to soften some blow if they don’t get pitching this winter, I did not ask this question and Elias was simply responding here to a national reporter’s question about pitching supply and demand.

On another topic, he was asked yet again about the O's signing a free agent player to a multi-year contract. Is that something that is coming for the Orioles?

“We’ve been entertaining it. We entertained it last year. I think, you know, we’ve got a lot of returning position players and a lot of those guys are around for years and years. It puts us in a unique spot – we don’t really need to run around filling out our position player profile on multi-year deals right now. Because we have so many homegrown core guys. And then it’s more of a case-by-case basis in talking about pitchers.

“We’ve been in those conversations. Obviously haven’t done one of those yet but it’s been on the menu for a while now and we’ve gotten really close on some of them. I’m sure that will happen at some point," Elias said.