Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels enters the Major League Baseball season as the heaviest favourite to win a Most Valuable Player Award since online sportbook Bovada.lv first started setting odds seven years ago.
Trout, 23, last year broke through to capture his first American League MVP award, becoming the first unanimous winner since Ken Griffey Jr. in 1997. Trout had finished as the runner- up to Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers during his first two major league seasons.
The Angels’ centre-fielder enters the 2015 season as an even-money favourite to become the eighth player in baseball history to win back-to-back AL MVP awards.
“This is the year Mike Trout becomes national,” said ESPN baseball analyst Curt Schilling, a three-time runner-up for the National League Cy Young Award. “He should already be, but I think this is the year where people look and say he probably could be the greatest player we’ve ever seen.
At 1-1 odds, a winning $100 wager on Trout would return a $100 profit. Jose Abreu of the Chicago White Sox has the second- best AL MVP odds at 4-1 after winning the 2014 rookie of the year award, according to online sportsbook Bovada, followed by Cabrera and Robinson Cano of the Seattle Mariners at 7-1.
In the NL, Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins is the 3-1 favourite to win the MVP. Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the 2013 NL MVP, is the second-favourite at 11-2, followed by Jonathan Lucroy of the Milwaukee Brewers (6-1) and reigning MVP Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers (7-1).
Sports books in Nevada don’t offer future odds on sports awards that are decided by a vote such as the MVP, which is presented annually by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Offshore sports books such as Latvia-based Bovada don’t have that restriction.
Since Bovada first started setting preseason odds for the MVP awards in 2009, no player has been as heavy a favourite as Trout this season. Trout’s teammate, Albert Pujols, six years ago won a second straight NL MVP award as the 2-1 betting favourite while with the St. Louis Cardinals.
The MVP winner with the longest odds in that span was Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers, who entered the 2011 season at 75-1 and became the first pitcher to be voted a league MVP since Dennis Eckersley in 1992.
Trout was a slight 5-1 favourite for the award entering last season, when he hit .287 with a career-high 36 home runs and 111 runs batted in for the Angels. He was the second player in 93 years to win the AL MVP after a pair of runner-up finishes, joining Mickey Mantle, the hall of fame New York Yankees outfielder to whom he’s often compared.
Trout’s 184 strikeouts were the most ever for an MVP and it’s a number he’s focused on improving this season.
”I take pride in everything I do,” Trout told MLB Network during spring training. “I work hard in the off-season, work hard in the cage, but most of all just have fun. It’s competing. Every time you start a game, you’re trying to win, and the competitiveness takes over in my body.”
Perhaps the last time baseball has had a player enter a season as such an overwhelming choice to win an MVP would be when Barry Bonds captured four straight NL awards from 2001-04, although he had Pujols to contend with at the time.
Trout’s former teammate, Vernon Wells, said an injury might be the only thing that can prevent the outfielder from joining Cabrera, Mantle, Frank Thomas, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Hal Newhouser and Jimmie Foxx as repeat winners of the AL MVP.
“He’s young, very strong and plays the game at a really high level and high pace,” Wells, who was with the Angels in 2011-12, said in an interview. “As long as he’s healthy, he could go down as one of the top 10 players of all time. The three years that he’s had, he’s put himself in a category that’s no one ever’s really been in.”
