On Thursday night, MLB announced the MVPs of the 2025 season. As is usually the case, there were no surprises at the top of the ballot. Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani brought home his second consecutive NL MVP award for the Dodgers and his third straight MVP. Yankees slugger Aaron Judge earned the honor for the AL in a very tight race over Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh.

However, the MVP ballot can historically contain a few oddities contained within. The Baseball Writer’s Association of America is in charge of voting for the league MVPs every year, based on a tally of 30 votes, and the voters are required to rank their top 10 choices for MVP. That creates a large enough pool of votes that each season’s ballot includes some unexpected names earning exactly one MVP vote.

Last year is a good example. Ohtani and Judge were unanimous MVPs, as it should have been. But on the NL side, Padres’ Dylan Cease and Brewers’ Jackson Chourio both received precisely one 10th-place vote. For the AL, those earning one vote included Astros’ Jose Altuve, Tigers’ Tyler Horton, Royals’ Seth Lugo, Rangers’ Corey Seager, and Astros’ Framber Valdez.

None of the names above deserved to win MVP over Judge or Ohtani. But their contributions to their teams’ respective season were substantial enough to be recognized with a vote in some capacity. It mostly makes for a fun bit of trivia down the line and serves as a glimpse into how baseball writers can rank the 5th to 10th-most deserving MVP candidates when the leaders are so obvious.

This year had some interesting names in this department. With the final votes tallied, here’s every player to earn exactly one MVP vote behind the winners. On the final ballot some players will finish with more “points” than others if their one vote came for a placement higher than 10th, but they all received one vote nonetheless.

PLAYER

TEAM

LEAGUE

Elly De La Cruz

Reds

NL

Nico Hoerner

Cubs

NL

Ketel Marte

Diamondbacks

NL

Seiya Suzuki

Cubs

NL

Aroldis Chapman

Red Sox

AL

Yandy Díaz

Rays

AL

Jacob Wilson

Athletics

AL

An interesting group, to be sure. While the winners earned their place atop the rankings these players can say they earned a vote for their performance this season. That’s something!

In the NL, a pair of Cubs earned MVP spots in the form of Nico Hoerner and Seiya Suzuki. Hoerner hit .297 from the plate and racked up 178 hits on the year to pair with Gold Glove defense, while Suzuki recorded 32 home runs and over 100 RBIs. Then there’s Elly De La Cruz, the Reds’ highlight machine who put forth another great season with 22 home runs and 37 stolen bases. Last but not least, Ketel Marte enjoyed another good season for the Diamondbacks, earning an NL Silver Slugger award to go with this MVP vote.

In the AL, Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman earned himself a vote after a ridiculous season in which he went months without giving up an earned run and totaled 32 saves. In Tampa Bay, Yandy Díaz’s efforts were rewarded with a vote; he batted a clean .300 with 175 hits on the year. Finally, Athletics rookie Jacob Wilson impressively appears on the MVP ballot in his first full MLB season. He finished second in Rookie of the Year voting behind his teammate, Nick Kurtz, and was named an All-Star for the first time as well.

It was a quite a season and these players will always be able to claim they wound up on an MVP ballot.

Full AL, NL MVP voting results for 2025 season

Every year for MVP voting, the Baseball Writers of America kindly release the full ballots showing every player who received votes, where those votes ranked those players, and how many total “points” they tallied.

Below you’ll find the full NL MVP award voting ballot for this season. You can look at a comprehensive breakdown of which votes were cast by each of the 30 writers here.