Rafael Devers of the Boston Red Sox, Jose Ramírez of the Cleveland Rangers, Julio Rodríguez of the Seattle Mariners and Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres are among the 16 sluggers that have reached the final round of voting for the prestigious Hank Aaron Award of Major League Baseball.
MLB announced others on the list are:
American League: Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez (Houston Astros), Aaron Judge (New York Yankees), Shohei Ohtani (Los Angeles Dodgers), and Mike Trout (Angelinos).
National League: Pete Alonso (New York Mets), Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt (St. Louis Cardinals), Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman (Los Angeles Dodgers), Austin Riley (Atlanta Braves) and Kyle Schwarber (Philadelphia Phillies).
About the Dominican contenders:
Rafael Devers is a 25-year old third baseman. He batted .295/.358/.521 and ranked fourth in the AL in slugging (.521) and OPS (.879), as well as doubles (42). His 70 extra-base hits tied for third with Angels sluggers Shohei Ohtani and Trout.
30-year old José Ramírez led the AL with 44 doubles and he finished second to Judge in total bases (309), extra-base hits (78) and RBIs (126). No hitter in the Majors was intentionally walked more than Ramírez (20).
21-year old Julio Rodríguez hit 28 homers and stole 25 bases, despite playing only 132 games because of injury. He joined Trout (2012) and Chris Young (’07) as the only rookies to reach both numbers in the same season. Rodríguez became the rookie in MLB history to first reach 25 homers and 25 steals in his career.
30-year old Manny Machado posted the NL’s third-highest OPS (.897), while cracking the 30-homer, 100-RBI and 100-run marks.
The award is presented to the player voted as the most outstanding regular-season offensive performer from the American and the National leagues. The award dates back to 1999 when it was created to commemorate the 25th year after Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record of 714.
Each MLB team nominates one player for the honor and a panel of MLB.com writers selects 16 finalists from the 30 nominees. Beginning Monday, 17 October 2022 and running through 24 October, fans can vote for the player from each league they think should receive the award by going to MLB.com/aaron.
In addition to the fan vote, a panel of Hall of Fame players gets to vote. The panel includes Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, Pedro Martínez, John Smoltz, Johnny Bench, Craig Biggio, Eddie Murray and Robin Yount.
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Diario Libre
19 October 2022