Pete Crow-Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez won the 2026 MVP awards unanimously on Thursday night, each taking all 30 first-place votes. The winners were announced on MLB Network from balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, and the BBWAA’s official awards record now lists Alvarez as the American League winner and Crow-Armstrong as the National League winner for 2026.
Neither race was close, and together they made history. Crow-Armstrong and Alvarez are the third pair of unanimous MVP winners in the same season, and because both Cy Young winners were unanimous on Wednesday, ESPN reported this is the first season in which both MVP winners and both Cy Young winners were all unanimous choices.
Join The iimiTV Letter
Enter your email and we will send you a confirmation link. Click it and your first edition lands on Friday.
Crow-Armstrong Wins NL MVP Behind A 40-40 Season
Crow-Armstrong, 24, took the National League award with a perfect 420 points, ahead of four-time MVP Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who finished second with 264 points, and Milwaukee second baseman Brice Turang in third. theScore reported he is the 11th unanimous winner in National League history and the first Chicago Cubs player ever to win the award unanimously. He is the first Cub to win it since Kris Bryant in 2016, and the win ends Ohtani’s run of three straight MVP awards.
The season behind the vote was complete in a way few seasons are. Crow-Armstrong played all 162 games and hit .280 with 45 home runs, tied for the major league lead, 107 runs batted in, 41 stolen bases and a league-leading 119 runs scored, with a .570 slugging percentage and a .942 OPS. He became the seventh player in MLB history to record a 40-home run, 40-steal season. The defence matched the bat: he won his second Gold Glove and the National League Platinum Glove, led the majors with 26 outs above average, and Sports Illustrated noted he is the first player in MLB history to win an MVP award and a Platinum Glove in the same season. One night earlier, he had already become the first player to hold the Hank Aaron Award and the Platinum Glove at the same time.
“I’m just blessed to have the ability that I do,” Crow-Armstrong said. “It brings me joy to be able to affect the game a lot of times on a daily basis.”
Alvarez Takes AL MVP At The End Of A Comeback Year
Alvarez, 29, was just as emphatic in the American League, taking all 30 first-place votes and 420 points ahead of Tampa Bay third baseman Junior Caminero, second with 267 points, and Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. in third. The Associated Press reported Alvarez made a run at the Triple Crown, hitting a career-high .316 to win the batting title, with 42 home runs and 106 runs batted in, finishing second in the league in both power categories behind Baltimore’s Pete Alonso. He led the majors in walks with 109, on-base percentage at .432 and slugging percentage at .601.
The award lands differently because of where Alvarez is coming from. A wrist fracture and a sprained ankle held him to 48 games in 2025; this year he played 158 games for the AL West champion Astros and was named the league’s Comeback Player of the Year on Wednesday. He is the second player to win an MVP as his team’s primary designated hitter, after Ohtani in 2024, the 31st player in history to win both an MVP and a Rookie of the Year award, and the third Astro to win it, joining Jeff Bagwell in 1994 and Jose Altuve in 2017.
“Incredible, incredible,” Alvarez said through an interpreter, admitting the emotion only hit when he heard his name called. Asked what changed in 2026, his answer was two words: “I was healthy.”
All Four Winners Unanimous, And A Toronto Footnote
The pairing itself is the record that will attach to this awards season. Unanimous winners in both leagues had happened only twice before, in 2023 with Ronald Acuña Jr. and Ohtani, and in 2024 with Ohtani and Aaron Judge. This year the sweep ran through the pitching awards too: Cam Schlittler in the American League and Jacob Misiorowski in the National League were both unanimous Cy Young winners on Wednesday, a night iimiTV covered as Schlittler beat Toronto’s Dylan Cease. Four top awards, 120 first-place votes between the two MVP races and the two Cy Young races, and not one voter broke ranks in any of them.
Toronto appears in the fine print. Cease, second in the Cy Young vote on Wednesday, finished 11th in the AL MVP balloting with 20 points and votes on eight ballots, a pitcher’s cameo in a hitters’ award that underlines how strong his first Blue Jays season was. The BBWAA voting for every award was completed before the postseason, so none of October counted toward any of it. The 2026 season now has its official individual record: two first-time MVPs, both unanimous, at the end of the first awards season that never produced a single dissenting first-place vote.
