It’s awards season. This year, that means it’s repeat season, too. Through three nights of BBWAA awards, we have already seen four winners who won one of these awards last year. That’s two more than in any other single year.
On Monday, Nick Kurtz and Drake Baldwin were named Rookies of the Year — the one award that can’t be precluded by a prior BBWAA award. But since then, the repeats have been off and running.
On Tuesday, both Stephen Vogt and Pat Murphy won their second consecutive Manager of the Year Awards. Before 2025, there had been two repeats in the history of the award, by 2020-21 Kevin Cash and 2004-05 Bobby Cox. Vogt is the first individual to win Manager of the Year in each of his first two seasons as an MLB manager. And both Vogt and Murphy are the only individuals to win Manager of the Year in each of their first two seasons at the helm of a specific team.
Then on Wednesday, Tarik Skubal won his second consecutive Cy Young Award and Paul Skenes won his first, which is a second consecutive BBWAA award after he won Rookie of the Year in 2024. Skubal is the 12th pitcher to win consecutive Cy Youngs, joining Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Jim Palmer, Denny McLain and Sandy Koufax. Skenes is the second pitcher to win Rookie of the Year in his first MLB season and Cy Young in his second, joining Dwight Gooden.
That brings us to four winners who won a BBWAA award last year, and we still have one more pair of awards left, with two more repeats possible. Shohei Ohtani has already won two consecutive MVP Awards and is looking to join Barry Bonds as the only players to win at least three straight. Aaron Judge also won last year and is a finalist yet again. We have never had a year where both league’s MVP winners had also won MVP the previous season.
Entering 2025, the most BBWAA winners in a season who had won a BBWAA award the year prior was two, as noted above. The list of seven instances, according to the Elias Sports Bureau:
Before this, we hadn’t even seen two repeats in the same year since 2009, and now we’re at four with the potential for two more.
Is it too soon to start wondering how many of this year’s winners will hear their names called again in 2026?
