The Players Choice Awards are the only major end-of-season honors voted on exclusively by the players themselves — and on October 14, the MLBPA announced the three finalists for the top prize: Pete Crow-Armstrong, Yordan Álvarez and Shohei Ohtani. In the American League, Álvarez faces Junior Caminero and Bobby Witt Jr. for the Outstanding Player Award; in the National League, Crow-Armstrong and Ohtani are the confirmed finalists. Winners will be announced the week of October 26.
The Crow-Armstrong season the clubhouse can’t ignore
There are good seasons, great seasons, and then there’s what Pete Crow-Armstrong did for the Chicago Cubs in 2026. The 24-year-old center fielder closed out the regular season slashing .280/.372/.570 — an OPS+ of 155, meaning he was 55% better than the average big-league hitter — with 45 home runs, 41 stolen bases, 107 RBI and 119 runs scored across all 162 games.
The number that puts him in the history books: Crow-Armstrong became just the seventh player in MLB history to reach 40-40 in a single season, and the first center fielder ever to post 40 home runs, 30 doubles and 30 stolen bases in the same year. Baseball America has already named him its 2026 Player of the Year.
His Statcast profile tells the same story: an average exit velocity of 90.6 mph, a hard-contact rate of 48.6% and a barrel rate of 13.3%. For context within Cubs history, he’s only the second left-handed hitter in franchise history to hit 40 home runs in a season, joining Billy Williams.
Cubs utility infielder Matt Shaw put it plainly to CBS Sports: «As far as the seasons I’ve seen in my experience in professional baseball, this is the best. I don’t think I’ve seen anything that even compares.»
Álvarez, the AL favorite — and the Caminero case
In the American League, Houston’s Yordan Álvarez arrives as the frontrunner for the league MVP and as an Outstanding Player finalist. His line: .314/.431/.601 with 41 home runs and 102 RBI. That’s the kind of slash line that makes it hard to argue against him.
But Junior Caminero of the Tampa Bay Rays — just 23 years old — has numbers worth debating: 42 home runs, 101 RBI and 79 walks, nearly double the 41 he drew the previous season. That’s a real leap in plate discipline, not a fluke. Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals, a three-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove shortstop, rounds out the AL trio.
On the NL side, Ohtani joins Crow-Armstrong as a confirmed finalist. The official announcement tweet was cut off before revealing the third NL finalist, so the complete list for that category is still pending confirmation from the MLBPA.
Ohtani: the biggest name in baseball arrives running on fumes
Shohei Ohtani finished the regular season with a 6.6 WAR per FanGraphs — tied for second in the National League, combining both hitting and pitching — but he entered the postseason in one of his worst offensive stretches of the year: no home runs and just one RBI over his final 24-plus games, further complicated by knee and biceps injuries that limited him down the stretch.
The key detail: the Players Choice Awards are voted on based on the full regular season, not playoff performance. Ohtani has already won the Player of the Year once (2021) and three Outstanding Player Awards (2021, 2023 and 2024); he’s been a finalist for both awards in each of the last six seasons. His résumé carries weight in any clubhouse.
That’s what makes this vote genuinely interesting: the players themselves have to decide whether Crow-Armstrong’s historically complete season at 24 years old is enough to move past the most recognizable name in world baseball. We’ll find out the week of October 26.
