The 2026 MLB season is just getting underway, but it's never too early to talk about awards races. The beginning of the season is when the fields are the widest, providing for the most interesting discussions around favorites and dark horses for MVP, Cy Young, and more.
The AL MVP Award has been dominated by one man over the past half-decade or so, but there's always room for a challenger or two every year. Trailing Aaron Judge in the early odds are two young studs — Bobby Witt Jr. and Julio Rodríguez.
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2026 AL MVP Odds
Somebody has to beat Aaron Judge eventually, right? Right? Probably, but until the Yankees' captain shows signs of slowing down, he'll sit right atop the AL MVP odds. The only thing that prevented him from winning four straight from 2022 to 2025 was some rogue uncovered cement in right field at Dodger Stadium, which knocked him out of commission for enough time for Shohei Ohtani to grab the award before bolting for the National League.
Despite some struggles late in the U.S.'s World Baseball Classic run, Judge has given fans and bettors no reason to believe that his historical offensive run is near an end. Judge smacked two homers in pool play, and finished the WBC with a respectable-but-not-Judgian .222/.364/.481 slash line over seven games. He'll slot right back into the Yankees' number two spot between Trent Grisham and Cody Bellinger, providing him the protection he needs for another amazing season.
Coming up in Judge's rearview is old foe Bobby Witt Jr., who was the AL MVP runner-up in 2024. That season, Witt slashed .332/.389/.588, putting up 10.5 fWAR and winning the AL batting title. He took a bit of a step back in 2025, but still managed a whopping 8.0 fWAR from a solid offensive campaign that was up by his excellent defense and baserunning. Witt is definitely the most complete player in the AL MVP conversation, so if every facet of his game clicks as it did in 2024, he could give Judge another run for his money.
Behind Judge and Witt, the field gets more interesting. Cal Raleigh, last year's home run leader and MVP runner-up, is given just a 6% chance to win, the same as teammate and former higher-touted prospect Julio Rodríguez. While it's statistically unlikely that Raleigh pops 60 homers again, he's still slated to be both one of the game's best hitters and best defensive catchers. It might not take a 10+ fWAR season to snag this award, and it's hard to believe Raleigh will take more than a 3-4 fWAR step back.
R0dríguez's placement on this list might be the most interesting. While he's been an unmistakably great player since he entered the league as a 21-year-old in 2022, he hasn't taken the leap to superstardom that was projected for him in his prospect and early MLB days. The knock on him has been that he's a notorious slow starter, but perhaps his time playing for the Dominican Republic in the WBC helped scrape off some of the rust. At just 25-years-old, the book on R0dríguez is still being written.
What is Kalshi?
Different than a traditional sportsbook and available in most states, Kalshi allows users to make predictions across several unique markets, including sports, entertainment, elections and even weather.
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Kalshi operates on a contract-based system where users buy "contracts" (priced between 1–99 cents) based on whether they believe a specific event will happen. The price of each contract fluctuates in real time based on market sentiment, and like the stock market, traders can sell positions early to lock in profits (or minimize losses).
