Pete Crow-Armstrong, the 24-year-old Chicago Cubs center fielder, won the National League Most Valuable Player award unanimously on Thursday, denying Los Angeles Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani a shot at tying Barry Bonds’ record of four consecutive MVP seasons.
Ohtani had won back-to-back NL MVPs the past two seasons with the Dodgers and the 2023 AL MVP in his final year with the Angels. Bonds is the only player in MLB history to win four straight, a feat accomplished from 2001 to 2004.
Early in the 2026 season, Ohtani looked like he might match that mark. Through games played June 7, he was hitting .300 while leading the NL with a .939 OPS, and he had returned to full-time pitching duty for the first time since his second career Tommy John surgery. He went 6-2 in his first 10 starts with an MLB-best 0.74 ERA and 67 strikeouts in 61 innings.
His season turned during a series in Pittsburgh, where he gave up a season-high four runs to the Pirates in one outing and was pulled early as designated hitter the next day because of inflammation in his left knee. That marked the start of a summer-long run of injuries that eroded his production at the plate and on the mound.
In early July, Ohtani developed a right arm injury on top of the knee problem. During the All-Star break, he was taken out of the Dodgers’ starting rotation to receive a lubricant injection in his knee and did not pitch again for the rest of the season. Attempts to ramp back up as a pitcher appeared to add further strain on his body.
Meanwhile, Crow-Armstrong, who started 2026 slowly, reworked his batting stance midseason and caught fire at the plate in the second half while anchoring the league’s best defensive outfield. The two were neck and neck in the MVP race through August, including a closely watched head-to-head series at Wrigley Field in Chicago the week after the trade deadline, with nearly identical statistics entering the stretch run.
By September, a visibly hampered Ohtani fell into a career-worst slump and landed on the injured list for the first time in his Dodgers tenure, effectively settling the MVP race.
Crow-Armstrong finished ahead of Ohtani across the board: a .280 batting average to Ohtani’s .275, a .943 OPS to .889, 45 home runs to 30, 107 RBIs to 81, and 41 stolen bases to 11. Even accounting for Ohtani’s pitching, in which he went 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA across 14 starts, Crow-Armstrong nearly doubled him in wins above replacement, 10.6 to 6.6 by FanGraphs’ measure, largely on the strength of his defense.
Ohtani’s injuries continued into the playoffs and have renewed questions about whether he can keep functioning as a full-time two-way player going forward. He still ranks second all time with four career MVP awards, three behind Bonds, and is likely to contend for more in future seasons. But his bid to join Bonds in baseball’s record books ended this year, and not particularly close.
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