Shohei Ohtani earned all 30 first-place votes for National League MVP after becoming the first member of Major League Baseball's 50-50 club and setting the Los Angeles Dodgers up for a World Series run. Ohtani earned 423 points in the voting. New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor finished second with 263 points. There is simply no controversy to be had.
But Philadelphia Phillies star Nick Castellanos made an extremely interesting argument for one of Lindor's teammates on the resurgent Mets. On a podcast with Chris Rose, Castellanos expounded the virtues of the Jose Iglesias signing and talked about all the veteran infielder provided to New York as it made its postseason push.
Nick Castellanos says Jose Iglesias should’ve won NL MVP pic.twitter.com/gxRVbSWoO7
— Chris Rose Sports (@ChrisRoseSports) January 13, 2025
“If you’re looking at the MVP as having the most weight on creating wins for your team, there’s no other player that has had that much weight as Jose Iglesias," Castellanos said. "With him being able to come in and bring that Latin spark, knocked the ice off of Lindor, finally got [Mark] Vientos probably comfortable to be able to be an everyday third baseman. And now a bunch of guys that look like they had no direction running in all different directions in the beginning of the year, they made the playoffs. Got to where they did while the whole Mets organization had the OMG signs."
It's a new way of thinking about what the award should entail. Iglesias played in only 85 games for the Mets but was extremely productive, posting a .337 batting average and putting the ball in play with a frequency not seen much in today's game. He also played his traditionally excellent defense. And make no mistake, OMG is a banger.
"The way I look at baseball, Jose Iglesias is unanimous National League MVP," he concluded.
Rose pointed out that such an argument wouldn't go over well with sabermetricians but Castellanos had a pretty good answer for that, saying: "I'm not a sabermetrician, I'm a baseball player."
Iglesias did not garner even a 10th place vote in the actual balloting. Turns out few are as creative as Castellanos.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Nick Castellanos Makes Strangely Compelling Argument for Jose Iglesias as NL MVP.
