2017 MLB season preview: SI's experts make their awards picks
Last season's MLB award winners offered an intriguing mix of the expected and the unexpected. In the American League, Mike Trout's brilliance was enough for voters to ignore the Angels' 74–88 record and win him his second MVP award in three seasons, and the previously unremarkable Rick Porcello edged out 2011 winner and former Tigers teammate Justin Verlander for the Cy Young. Detroit didn't go home entirely empty-handed, as righthander Michael Fulmer won the Rookie of the Year award, holding off a late surge from Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez. In the National League, Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant followed up his Rookie of the Year campaign in 2015 by taking home the MVP in '16; the Nationals' Max Scherzer made it a sweep of ex-Tigers to win the Cy Young Award; and Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager easily won top rookie honors.
What does 2016 have in store? Could Seager follow Bryant's path and go from ROY to MVP? Will Verlander, at age 34, overcome last year's snub? And is the AL MVP award now Trout's to lose every year? Read on to see the predictions made by SI's baseball experts: senior writers Tom Verducci and Ben Reiter, staff writers Albert Chen and Jack Dickey, contributing writer Jay Jaffe, senior editors Ted Keith and Emma Span and producer Jon Tayler.
