Staying in the lineup every day has always been the big issue that dogs Yordan Alvarez. He has played in 130-plus games just three times in seven seasons, and he’s never finished higher than third in MVP voting.

So far in 2026, nobody in Major League Baseball has been more productive at the plate than Alvarez, and it’s no coincidence that he’s played in every one of his team’s games. Doing so makes him the top early candidate for AL MVP.

Alvarez leads the majors in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and has more home runs than all but one player, Chicago White Sox rookie import Munetaka Murakami. Alvarez’s 2.1 WAR (via Fangraphs) leads all major leaguers, even Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani (2.0).

Alvarez and New York Yankees slugger Ben Rice are far and away the early frontrunners for AL MVP, though Rice teammate Aaron Judge is just a hot streak away from making it a three-person race. Rice’s individual hangup hasn’t been health or production, but instead persuading Yankees manager Aaron Boone to write his name in the lineup every day. Sometimes the left-handed batter stays on the bench against left-handed pitchers, though it’s not because Rice has trouble hitting them; his splits against lefties are even better than his results against righties.

Really, it’s a matter of Boone wanting to keep Paul Goldschmidt and Giancarlo Stanton happy. With Stanton hitting the injury list this week, Boone has one fewer rationalization to keep Rice out of the starting lineup. Still, it’s conceivable that over the full season, Rice loses a chance to win MVP because he loses at-bats to lesser players on his own team. He’s likely going to need those opportunities to stay ahead of Alvarez and Judge, and there are bound to be voters who won’t pick Rice because “How can you vote for a platoon player to be the MVP?” They would have a point.

Ohtani’s biggest competition for MVP in the NL is himself, because he’s also trying to win NL Cy Young. While still playing for the Los Angeles Angels in 2022, he came pretty close to winning MVP (second place) and Cy Young (fourth) in the same season. And while the MVP/Cy double has been done 11 times in history, it’s never been done Ohtani’s way – being the best hitter and pitcher.

Ohtani has allowed one (1!) earned run in four starts so far. He is performing about as well on the mound as he did in 2025 but, since Ohtani is another year removed from Tommy John surgery, he’s able to stay in the game longer as a pitcher. His expected ERA (2.01) actually ranks second to Pirates ace Paul Skenes (1.94), and isn’t that much lower than any number of other pitchers, notably teammate Tyler Glasnow (2.16). Expected stats don’t matter with a lot of voters anyway, but they’re really going to be irrelevant if Ohtani over a full season puts up an ERA that looks something like Bob Gibson’s famous 1.12 in 1968.

Ohtani is like Judge in that he hasn’t found a hot streak yet to launch his hitting numbers into the stratosphere. He is only slugging .500. Let’s pick it up, Shohei. Remember: He didn’t win NL Player of the Month in April in 2025, either.

Postseason awards are always left to voters’ opinions, and it probably wouldn’t be a bad opinion to vote Skenes for Cy Young when the time comes. But if Ohtani could win an ERA title by pitching at least 162 innings to qualify while hitting enough to take home his fourth straight MVP, he still could say (again) that he’s done something nobody else has ever accomplished.