The Sporting News baseball awards have a long and storied tradition, dating back to the 1936 season. What was unique then, and the tradition continues, was the TSN awards were voted on by the players, managers and executives in the game.
This year, 376 players submitted ballots, a robust total, and their votes told a story. It’s not easy to impress big-league ballplayers, so these awards show which players have earned the respect of their peers. As always, it’s cool to be part of this longstanding baseball tradition. Ballots were sent out in mid-September.
Without further ado, here are the 2023 TSN MLB award winners.
MLB Player of the Year: Ronald Acuña Jr., Braves
Major League ballplayers just keep raising the bar for what it takes to win The Sporting News Player of the Year award. In 2021, Shohei Ohtani won the award with a season like we’ve never seen, dominating on the mound and at the plate. Last year, Aaron Judge needed all 62 of his home runs to take home the award. And this year, Acuña showed us what’s possible on the power/speed front, with baseball’s first 40/70 season, finishing with 41 homers and 73 stolen bases, to go with 106 RBIs — exclusively out of the leadoff spot in the order — 149 runs scored, 217 hits and a 168 OPS+.
Truly incredible stuff. Maybe most impressive, and you can bet the players that voted for him noticed, was how Acuña has matured as a hitter at the plate. In 2019, his last full injury-free season, Acuña struck out 188 times and walked 76 times. This year, he struck out only 84 times — 104 fewer strike outs, in 20 more plate appearances! — and walked 80 times.
Ohtani finished a distant second, and Mookie Betts, Matt Olson and Corey Seager also received double-digit votes. With Acuña just 25 years old, nobody in the sport would be surprised if this was just the first of multiple times he wins this player-voted award.
MORE: Historic season, durability lead players to vote Acuña for POY
AL Rookie of the Year: Gunnar Henderson, Orioles
Take a peek back at preseason AL rookie projections and you’ll see Gunnar’s name right up at the top of every list, whether they were sports books odds or just regular old-fashioned prediction articles. The reason? Henderson, a second-round pick in the 2019 draft, started the 2022 season in Double-A and finished it by posting a 126 OPS+ in 34 games for the big-league Birds at the end of the year.
So, yes, expectations were high. The season had its ups and downs, but most of the downs were early and once he got hot in June — a .320 average and .994 OPS — the rest of the way was mostly one big up. Henderson finished with 28 home runs, a 6.3 bWAR and 100 runs scored. His glove helped, too; he started 68 games at third base and 64 games at shortstop, often switching positions during the game as manager Brandon Hyde played matchups with pinch-hitters elsewhere in the lineup.
Henderson finished far ahead of runner-up Triston Casas, who started slow and rallied to hit 24 homers before spending the last couple weeks of the season on the IL.
NL Rookie of the Year: Corbin Carroll, Diamondbacks
Hey, sometimes predictions really do come true. Like Henderson in the AL, Carroll was the heavy favorite to win the NL rookie award heading into this season, and like Henderson, Arizona’s rookie got the job done. Not sure anyone expected him to be quite this good, this early in his career, though. Carroll, who turned 23 in August, finished with 25 homers and 54 stolen bases — he was only caught stealing five times! — to go with 30 doubles, 10 triples, 76 RBIs, a 134 OPS+ and a 5.4 bWAR.
Carroll broke out of the gates hot, batting .309 with four homers, 10 stolen bases and a .910 OPS by the end of April, and he never really slowed down. His “worst” offensive month of the year was July, and he still posted an .800 OPS with four homers and nine stolen bases.
If those homer/stolen bases seem eye-popping, it’s because they are. Heading into the 2023 season, that combination — at least 25 homers, at least 54 stolen bases — had happened only eight times in MLB history, and not since Rickey Henderson did it (for the second time) in the 1990 season. Acuña, of course, also topped those marks this year.
Carroll received more than three times as many votes as Reds rookie Matt McClain, who finished second in the voting.
AL Comeback Player of the Year: Tyler Glasnow, Rays
Maybe it’s fitting that Glasnow wins the Comeback Player of the Year award in 2023, the same year his actor doppelgänger, Cillian Murphy, starred in one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters, Oppenheimer.
As hard as it is to believe, this is the first season in Glasnow’s career — he made his MLB debut in 2016 — that he reached the 120-innings mark. His career has been marked by both injuries and impressive performances. Glasnow had Tommy John surgery in August 2021 and worked his way back to make two short regular-season appearances at the end of the 2022 season, and then make one start in the postseason.
Another injury, this time an oblique issue, prevented him from making 2023 debut until the end of May. Glasnow made 21 starts this season, and in 11 of them he threw at least five innings with one or zero earned runs allowed. Three times this season he struck out at least 11 batters, including a season-high 14 in six innings vs. Boston in September. For the season, he finished with 162 strikeouts in 120 innings, with a solid 3.53 ERA and 2.91 FIP.
NL Comeback Player of the Year: Cody Bellinger, Cubs
As much as he loved being a Dodger, Cody Bellinger needed a change of scenery for the 2023 season. From 2020-22, the 2019 NL MVP was a shell of his peak self, batting .203 with a 76 OPS+ and a soaring strikeout rate. And the Cubs, if they were going to contend for a playoff spot in 2023, needed to roll the dice with a gamble on a struggling player with a huge upside. The pairing really could not have worked out much better for either side.
Bellinger put together a fantastic bounce-back season, and the Cubs spent the season in a chase for one of the NL wild-card spots, though they just missed out in the last week. Bellinger, who played 84 games in center field and 59 at first base, hit a career-high .307, to go with 26 homers, 97 RBIs, 20 stolen bases and a 133 OPS+ in 130 games.
He played so well that it’s long been a certainty he’d decline his side of the 2024 mutual option on his contract and hit the free-agent market ready to cash in. And he very well might stay in Chicago — he’s clearly at home in the Wrigley Field ivy — but he’d do so with a new contract, earned with an impressive comeback season.
AL Manager of the Year: Brandon Hyde, Orioles
Safe to say Hyde has won the admiration of his managerial peers. This is the second year in a row he’s won the AL manager award. Last year, he helped guide the Orioles from 110 losses in 2021 to 83 wins in 2022. This year, almost incredibly, his young Orioles took another giant step up, all the way to 101 wins and the AL’s best record.
And this happened after what was seen by many as a lackluster offseason, when the Orioles didn’t go out and sign or trade for an elite starter, as so many fans wanted. But Hyde, who was hired before the 2019 season when the rebuilding process was at its lowest and most win-averse point, expertly made the roster mix work.
NL Manager of the Year: Tie: Brian Snitker, Braves, and Craig Counsell, Brewers
Choosing just one manager for the National League award this year was no easy task, not with so many worthy candidates help lifting their teams above expectations. So it’s not really a surprise that this year’s award is shared by the managers of two division champions, Brian Snitker of the Braves and Craig Counsell of the Brewers.
Snitker’s Braves were expected to be good, but few people expected them to put together this type of historic regular season, and not just in terms of their epic number of runs scored and home runs hit. If it felt like there were stretches where the Braves never lost, it’s because that was basically true. Consider their run from June 3 to July 8; Atlanta went 27-4, and three of those four losses were by a single run. Two were walk-off losses. They hit 75 home runs in that stretch and outscored opponents 207-115.
Counsell’s Brewers operated a different way — pitching first — but even though they didn’t have the same type of offense as other squads, as always the Milwaukee manager put his players in the best positions to succeed, and the Brewers cruised to 92 wins and a comfortable nine-game margin over the NL Central’s second-best team, the Cubs.
MLB Executive of the Year: Mike Elias, Orioles General Manager
This is a 2023 award, but for executives, the award is always the result of years of good work. Elias was hired after Baltimore’s 115-loss season in 2018 and went to work building the organization from the ground up, with a lot of focus on hitting in the draft. That’s been a huge area of success for the Orioles in Elias’ tenure. Think about this: The first two players Elias drafted were Adley Rutschman, with the No. 1 overall pick, and Gunnar Henderson, with the first pick of the second round.
That alone would probably be enough for Elias to win many awards. His first two picks in the 2020 draft, Heston Kjerstad and Jordan Westburg, have already reached the majors, too. And his first-round pick in 2021, Colton Cowser, roared through the minors to reach the bigs this year, too. Oh, and the player he picked No. 1 overall in the 2022 draft just might be the best of the group. Jackson Holliday hit .323 with a .449 on-base percentage in 2023, playing at four levels — from Class A all the way up to Triple-A — in his age-19 season.
And it’s not just about the draft picks, of course. Elias might not have spent money as some fans wanted, but he has shown a deft hand in finding the right players — through free agency, trades or other pick-ups — to add to Baltimore’s mix, guys like Aaron Hicks, Ryan O’Hearn, Kyle Gibson, Shintaro Fujinami and Tyler Wells.
American League All-Star team
(All-Star teams are voted on by front-office executives)
C: (tie) Adley Rutschman, Orioles & Cal Raleigh, Mariners
1B: Yandy Diaz, Rays
2B: Marcus Semien, Rangers
3B: Jose Ramirez, Guardians
SS: Corey Seager, Rangers
OF: Julio Rodriguez, Mariners
OF: Kyle Tucker, Astros
OF: Luis Robert Jr., White Sox
DH: Shohei Ohtani, Angels
SP: Gerrit Cole, Yankees
RP: Felix Bautista, Orioles
National League All-Star team
C: (tie) Sean Murphy, Braves, William Contreras, Brewers, Will Smith, Dodgers
1B: Freddie Freeman, Dodgers
2B: Ozzie Albies, Braves
3B: Dansby Swanson, Cubs
SS: Austin Riley, Braves
OF: Ronald Acuña, Braves
OF: Mookie Betts, Dodgers
OF: (tie) Juan Soto, Padres & Cody Bellinger, Cubs
DH: Bryce Harper, Phillies
SP: Blake Snell, Padres
RP: Devin Williams, Brewers
