Pete Crow-Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez won the 2026 MVP awards unanimously last night, each taking all 30 first-place votes in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. The full story of the announcement night is here: Crow-Armstrong’s 40-40 season for the Chicago Cubs, Alvarez’s comeback year for the Houston Astros, and the first awards season in which both MVP winners and both Cy Young winners were unanimous.
Friday brought the layer the announcement could not: the winners’ own reactions in full, the individual ballots published by the BBWAA, the runner-up answering back, and the first clear look at what each man wants next. The Pete Crow-Armstrong MVP reaction, in particular, was not a victory lap.
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Pete Crow-Armstrong MVP Reaction: Not Satisfied Yet
“I still don’t feel satisfied with what I put out, with the product that I put on the field this year,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And it sounds so melancholy, but I’m so happy being able to say this because I really just, I know there’s more. I’ve decided there’s more. That’s how I got here.” The Associated Press reported he measured the award against the one thing missing from his first four seasons: “Success in my eyes is being called a winner, and I’m not necessarily there yet.” The Cubs have been eliminated in the postseason in each of the past two years.
The detail underneath the reaction explains the leap. Crow-Armstrong hit .280 against left-handed pitching in 2026 after managing only .188 against southpaws in 2025, per the AP’s full report, and he tied Kyle Schwarber for the major league home run lead while leading the majors with 26 Outs Above Average and 23 Runs Prevented, according to Baseball Savant. “It’s funny that everybody seems to be talking about the offence,” he said. “That wasn’t always the case. I feel like I’ve spent the last five years of professional baseball trying to prove to people that I was more than a glove-first player.” Chicago had already placed its bet before the season: Crow-Armstrong agreed to a $115 million, six-year contract in March, so the MVP year was the first season of the deal, not a walk year. The Cubs marked the win with a social video of Crow-Armstrong writing “Love you Chicago!” on a baseball and launching it out of Wrigley Field, as Focal News described it.
Alvarez Shares The Night, Then Tips His Runner-Up
Alvarez took the announcement at home in every sense, joined by his wife, their two children, his parents and his siblings. “I feel amazing, super excited about this,” he said. “In the last week I’ve been pretty restless. Knowing that I can celebrate this with my family, it’s super special.” Our Esquina reported his fuller reflection: “We’ve had such a long road, such a hard road. It’s incredible,” a line MLB Network PR also carried from the announcement. The comeback had a method behind it: Alvarez said he hired a personal trainer during the postseason who accompanied him through the 2026 season, after injuries held him to 48 games in 2025.
IT’S UNANIMOUS
Yordan Alvarez is your 2026 American League Most Valuable Player! pic.twitter.com/lYy7qBFeVQ
— MLB (@MLB) November 13, 2026
By Friday the full size of Alvarez’s week had settled. On Wednesday he had already collected the Hank Aaron Award, the Edgar Martinez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award, an All-MLB First Team place and the AL Comeback Player of the Year award, theScore noted, before the MVP made it five honours in two days. He is only the fourth Cuban-born MVP in history, after Zoilo Versalles in 1965, Jose Canseco in 1988 and Jose Abreu in 2020, and the 14th unanimous winner in American League history, per Our Esquina’s voting breakdown.
The runner-up answered, and Alvarez answered him back. Junior Caminero, second in his second full season and the highest MVP finisher in Tampa Bay Rays history, said: “First, I want to congratulate Yordan on winning the MVP. He’s an incredible player and deserves all the recognition. Obviously I wanted to win, but I’m proud of what I accomplished this season. I’m still young, I have a lot more to prove, and this only motivates me to keep getting better. My time will come,” via Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Alvarez returned the compliment in kind: “Obviously, this time it was my opportunity to win it, my time to win, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he very soon, that the award’s going to him.”
The Ballots Are Public, And The Winter Clock Is Running
The BBWAA has now published all 30 individual NL MVP ballots, and they show how deep Crow-Armstrong’s win ran beneath the unanimous top line. Shohei Ohtani took second place on 26 ballots, but not all of them: Pittsburgh’s Rick Cerrone placed Kyle Schwarber second and Ohtani fourth, San Francisco’s Susan Slusser put Brice Turang second, and the two St. Louis voters put Cy Young winner Jacob Misiorowski second. In the American League, Caminero’s 267 points came on 27 second-place votes, with Bobby Witt Jr.’s support scattered down the ballot in third.
What it means next is a calendar, not a ceremony. The MVP announcement closed BBWAA awards week, but the Silver Slugger Awards and the qualifying offer decisions, set at $23.15 million, both land on November 17, the owners meet in New York from November 17 to 19, and the non-tender deadline follows on November 20, per the published offseason calendar. Over all of it sits December 1, when the collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. ET, with the Winter Meetings scheduled for December 7 to 9 in San Diego only if a new agreement is in place.
So the 2026 record closes with two first-time MVPs who both spent their first day as winners talking about somebody else’s future or their own unfinished business: Crow-Armstrong chasing the word winner, Alvarez pointing at the 23-year-old behind him. The unanimous part is settled. The rest of the winter is not.
