After a dizzying few days, the dust from the 2023 trade deadline has finally started to settle. The landscape of the league has shifted dramatically just over the last 48 hours or so: Justin Verlander is an Astro; Max Scherzer (and Jordan Montgomery) is a Ranger; the Dodgers, Rays and Orioles all found themselves a starting pitcher, while the Reds didn’t. The Angels (and Cubs) are all the way in, the Mets are all the way out, and the Twins and Yankees … apparently did not have cell reception on Tuesday afternoon. That’s a whole lot of change, and unsurprisingly, the futures market for season-ending awards has responded accordingly.
So, just like we did out of the All-Star break, let’s celebrate the start of baseball’s stretch run with a look at how the past few weeks and the trade deadline have impacted the AL MVP race over at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Updated AL MVP odds as of 8/3
Shohei Ohtani -20000 Kyle Tucker +6500 Corey Seager +7500
Randy Arozarena +9000 Marcus Semien +9000 Wander Franco +10000
Adolis Garcia +15000 Adley Rutschman +15000 Jose Ramirez +15000
Bo Bichette +15000 Yandy Diaz +20000 Josh Naylor +20000
A question: If the Angels had decided to shop Ohtani at the trade deadline, and he’d landed with a National League team — say, the Dodgers — would he still take home AL MVP honors? You could make a pretty compelling argument that the answer is yes, particularly with Seager, Yordan Alvarez, Aaron Judge and Bo Bichette all waylaid by injury at various points this season. Just one of the endless ways to try and express how impossibly great Ohtani has been in 2023.
Of course, the Angels didn’t decide to shop their two-way phenom; L.A. went all the way in the other direction, loading up as much as they could to try and make one last run at the postseason. While that’s great news for every neutral observer who’ll be glued to the TV watching to see whether Ohtani (and the return of Mike Trout) can finally drag this team to October after years of disappointment, it does make for a bit of a bummer of an AL MVP race. As you can see by the odds above, this is pretty much signed, sealed and delivered — mostly due to Ohtani’s historic awesomeness, but also because of injuries and an AL field that features lots of very good players but not many great (and healthy) ones. The Rays and Rangers have slumped a bit recently, dinging the candidacies of Seager, Semien, Garcia, Franco, Arozarena and Diaz, while the resurgent Astros have Kyle Tucker now in pole position for the non-Ohtani version of this award.
AL MVP race: Takeaways and best bets
Any player other than Shohei Ohtani, +3000
Did you expect anything else? At -20000, there’s no reason to put money down on Ohtani at this point, and if something — knock on wood — catastrophic were to happen at some point over the next few weeks, the resulting MVP race could go in any number of directions. Maybe Tucker snags it. Maybe Alvarez goes on a tear. Maybe it’s Rutschman, for being the best player on what’s shaping up to be the AL’s best team. The only way to make sure you’re covered in the event of an Ohtani injury is to take the field, and +3000 is still plenty of juice to make it worth your while.
