Cal Raleigh Loses 2025 AL MVP Award to Aaron Judge, 17-13 in First Place Votes
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — The race had been close, it had been billed as close, and although some of the insider indications had swung hard one way in the final days, it still seemed like anyone’s guess which way the votes would come in.
In the end, the betting markets and predictions from some of the biggest voices had proved accurate. Aaron Judge had taken home the AL Most Valuable Player award, beating out a tough challenge from Cal Raleigh to complete his hat trick of MVPs. With Judge’s victory, the slate of MVPs in 2025 ended up identical to 2024, with Shohei Ohtani taking home the NL MVP award.
It was a race where someone had to lose and someone had to win, though both candidates had been well deserving.
“When we play Seattle, man, the main objective is make sure Cal doesn’t beat you,” Judge said after winning the award. “He can beat you from both sides of the plate.”
And it was a close contest, as it turned out. Judge won 17 first place MVP votes while Raleigh took home 13. In total points, the tally was 355 to 335. The final result, however, did not take away from the historicity of either campaign. Judge outclassed his peers with the bat in a way that hadn’t been seen since Barry Bonds, while Raleigh hit home runs at a pace that is almost unheard of.
When Byron Bancroft Johnson was hired as the president of the Western League in 1894, ambitions of a second major league were still a long way off from being realized. The American Association, an early competitor to the Senior Circuit, had collapsed in 1891, and the Panic of 1893 meant that the middle Gay Nineties weren’t a very merry time for starting up a baseball league.
Home runs weren’t exactly a big part of the game in that era. When Johnson realized his dream of a second major league in 1901, Nap Lajoie’s 14 longballs led the circuit. Socks Seybold of the Philadelphia Athletics led both leagues with 16 homers in 1902, a mark that the American League would not reach again until 1919 - when Babe Ruth blew that record out of the water with a 29-homer season.
Warren Gamaliel Harding promised America a return to normalcy in 1920, but on the diamond, the old dead ball era was six feet under. Ruth hit 54 home runs that year and 59 the next, becoming the first player to ever hit 60 homers in a calendar year when he walloped a shot in Game 4 of the 1921 World Series. Years after the Teapot Dome Scandal had ruined the 29th president’s posthumous reputation, Ruth was still on top of the world: 1927 saw him hit 60 home runs in a regular season and two in the World Series, setting a mark of 62 in a calendar year.
Roger Maris’ legendary 1961 season marked the first time anyone beat 60 in the regular season, but one World Series shot meant that 62 in a calendar year was still unbeaten. While Steroid Era National League sluggers blew past the mark around the turn of the millennium, that figure remained untouched in the Junior Circuit until 2022 when Aaron Judge smashed 62 in the regular season and two in the ALDS to reach 64 in a calendar year.
Position and pinstripes united these three sluggers, all of whom did their work from the Yankees outfield. On the other end of the field crouched the catchers, whose legs took a heavy toll behind the dish, and even the best power backstops couldn’t come close to these all-time homer totals. Hall of Famer Gabby Harnett cracked 37 for the 1930 Chicago Cubs and fellow Cooperstown inductee Johnny Bench broke that record with 45 in 1970. Potential future Hall of Famer Salvador Perez bested that mark with 48 in 2021.
That record had taken 40 years to be broken, then 51. Just four years later, it was shattered.
Cal Raleigh crushed 60 home runs in the 2025 regular season. Like all primary catchers, some of his time on the field was spent out of the catcher’s mask, in his case as a designated hitter. 49 of Raleigh’s blasts came when he was behind the dish for the game, more than any primary catcher had ever hit total.
He had one of the greatest catching seasons of all time. He slashed .247/.359/.589 for a .948 OPS and 169 OPS+, knocked in 125 runs, and stole 14 bases. He was an above-average defender behind the plate overall, good in both framing and throwing though less so in blocking. He accrued 9.1 Fangraphs wins above replacement (fWAR), though his Baseball-Reference WAR, which doesn’t include runs generated by catcher framing, was 7.4.
And with five home runs in the postseason, Raleigh set the American League record with 65 homers in a calendar year.
As it turned out, it wasn’t enough to win MVP. Aaron Judge lapped him in offensive production with a .331/.457/.688 slash line, 53 homers of his own, a 1.144 OPS, and a 215 OPS+. Although he played a less premium defensive position, he still crushed Raleigh in bWAR with 9.7. His 10.1 fWAR was right on the one-WAR margin of error line over Raleigh’s 9.1, and so Raleigh’s case hinged to a certain degree on the uncounted value of a catcher organizing his staff. It’s an aspect of the game that Seattle’s backstop always focuses on.
“The defensive side always comes first,” Raleigh said. “Managing games, managing, you know, plans, meetings, things like that, 13 different personalities. It comes with those challenges, but it’s what I love to do, I enjoy doing it every day.”
In my own view, this catcher value did indeed tie it up and Raleigh’s better story served as the tiebreaker. But I’m not an MVP voter, and although many indeed saw it similarly, more around baseball took Judge’s side in the debate.
The final week of the regular season was pivotal. Late on Sept. 24, after Raleigh hit his 60th home run, the chance of Raleigh winning jumped to 65.3 percent on Kalshi. Judge and Raleigh were truly neck-and-neck in fWAR, and with the better story coming from the west coast, bettors began to see Raleigh as the favorite.
“I never could have dreamed of ever hitting 60 home runs. It still kind of feels, like, not real in a way, but I think what made that night super special was that it was the first time we had won the division in 20-something years. To do that on top of the 60th homer was something I’ll never forget,” Raleigh said. “I feel like the 60th was a little different than the rest of them … that one, for some reason, felt different running the bases. To join a club that, obviously, Aaron [Judge] is already a part of, that only a handful of guys are in, is pretty special.”
Four games later, things had settled back down. Raleigh went 3-16 from Sept. 25 through the end of the regular season with no home runs all while Judge went 6-14 with two bombs. Jeff Passan, one of the most respected voices in baseball journalism, indicated in a Sept. 25 interview on the Pat McAfee Show that one of his sources had been getting unanimous feedback from players in favor of Judge.
From Sept. 29 through Nov. 9, Judge’s odds of winning the MVP stabilized around 70 percent according to Kalshi. The votes had already been cast, but their verdict was as of yet unknown. Players around the league voted Raleigh the 2025 AL Player of the Year and the Sporting News’ MLB Player of the Year award, though those awards are more narrative-oriented than MVP.
On Nov. 10, something changed. Judge’s MVP odds skyrocketed to around 95 percent on Kalshi, propelled by some big bets made between 10 and 11 a.m. eastern. Whether there was a leak followed by insider betting or not is as of yet unclear, but others noticed the uptick, assumed that some insider bets were being placed, and went along with the crowd. BetMGM’s -300 line for Judge was closer, but still in favor of the Yankee.
Bob Nightengale, president of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), tweeted on Thursday morning that Judge was expected to “narrowly beat out” Raleigh for the AL MVP. Raleigh backers held out hope, however, until the final tally was revealed, but the 17-13 result matched Nightengale’s expectations.
Despite speculation that Nightengale had seen the results beforehand, former BBWAA president and longtime Mariners reporter Larry Stone noted that when he was in that role, he didn’t get any such preview.
The voting, of course, occurred before the playoffs, with both the Yankees and Mariners in the big dance. Both Judge and Raleigh would have happily traded an MVP for a championship, and yet neither made the road to the World Series. For the Mariner, who was left in the cold without either title, there is only the future to look to.
Whether the M’s will build on their deep run in 2026 is up to the offseason that the front office can put together and the season that the players can put together. Raleigh, whatever the outcome, will be a big part of that.