Pete Crow-Armstrong made baseball history on Wednesday night, November 11, in Las Vegas, becoming the first player in Major League Baseball history to hold his league’s top offensive honour and its top defensive honour at the same time. Crow-Armstrong won the National League Hank Aaron Award at the MLB Awards show, adding the league’s best offensive performer prize to the National League Platinum Glove he had already won as its best defensive player, a pairing described as a first in the complete MLB Awards list published after the ceremony.
The Chicago Cubs centre fielder got there on a season that worked at both ends of the game: 45 home runs, 41 stolen bases, 107 runs batted in and 119 runs scored in 162 games. Yordan Alvarez of the Houston Astros won the American League Hank Aaron Award on the same night.
Join The iimiTV Letter
Enter your email and we will send you a confirmation link. Click it and your first edition lands on Friday.
The Season Behind The Double Honour
Crow-Armstrong hit .280 with a .943 on base plus slugging mark, tied for the National League lead in home runs with 45, led the league in runs scored, and finished third in runs batted in, figures set out by Bleacher Report in its Hank Aaron Award report. He played all 162 games, posted 31 doubles and eight triples, and was named to the All-MLB First Team as an outfielder on the same night in Las Vegas.
The power and speed combination is rare on its own. Crow-Armstrong became only the seventh player in MLB history to record at least 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in the same season. That is the offensive case for the Hank Aaron Award, which has been presented since 1999 to the most outstanding offensive performer in each league, decided by fans and a panel of Hall of Fame players. Crow-Armstrong is the fourth player in Cubs franchise history to win it, and the first time he has won the award in his career.
What makes the night historic is the other half of the pairing. The Platinum Glove goes to the best defensive player in each league, chosen from the Gold Glove winners. Crow-Armstrong led the majors in outs above average during the season and won the National League award as a centre fielder, the first National League centre fielder to win a Platinum Glove since the award was created in 2011. Sluggers who lead a league in home runs rarely also grade as its best defender at any position. Holding both titles in the same season had never happened before.
Alvarez Takes The American League Side
Alvarez won the American League Hank Aaron Award on a 42 home run campaign with 106 runs batted in and a 1.033 on base plus slugging mark, becoming the second player in Astros franchise history to win the award, according to theScore report on the MLB Awards. His night in Las Vegas went further: he also won the Edgar Martinez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award, the first player other than Shohei Ohtani to win that honour since 2020, and he was named to the All-MLB First Team as the designated hitter.
Both Hank Aaron winners are finalists for their league Most Valuable Player awards, which are scheduled to be announced on Thursday night, November 12. That timing matters for how this story should be read on Thursday morning: the double honour is already complete and already historic, whatever the MVP vote adds later in the day. A Crow-Armstrong MVP win would extend the run, but the first in history pairing of the top offensive and top defensive honours does not depend on it.
Blue Jays Land Two On All-MLB First Team
Toronto had its own reason to mark the same Las Vegas night. Blue Jays pitchers Dylan Cease and Louis Varland were both named to the All-MLB First Team, as Sportsnet reported from the awards show. Cease earned First Team honours after posting a 2.40 earned run average with 239 strikeouts and 78 walks over 169 innings in his first season with Toronto, a season that also finished second in American League Cy Young voting earlier on Wednesday. It is his third All-MLB selection in his career.
Varland took a First Team place after being named American League Reliever of the Year earlier in the day. He collected 35 saves in 71 appearances for Toronto, with a 1.27 earned run average and 97 strikeouts in 78 innings, and this is his first All-MLB selection. The All-MLB teams, introduced in 2019, are chosen with 50 percent of the vote from fans and 50 percent from a panel of experts. Cease and Varland are the 11th and 12th individual seasons in Blue Jays franchise history to be placed on one of the All-MLB teams, a Toronto angle that sits inside the bigger awards night without changing its headline: in Las Vegas, the story the whole sport will carry into MVP night is a 24 year old centre fielder who was, at the same time, his league’s best bat and its best glove, and no player before him had ever held both.
