Nat’s Harper unanimous pick in NL

After being deemed “Baseball’s Chosen One” when he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in June 2009 as a 16-year-old high school junior-to-be, it’s seemed like Bryce Harper has always been set up like a bowling pin only to be famously knocked on his butt. There just wasn’t any way possible the young super-prospect could live up to such out-of-this-galaxy expectations.

Now, after four major league seasons as the Washington Nationals starting right fielder, Harper – an alumnus of the 2009 Perfect Game All-American Classic – seems to have not only reached those sky-high expectations SI put out there more than six years ago, he has surpassed them.

On Thursday night, based on balloting conducted by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), Harper received his first National League Most Valuable Player Award. At the age of 22 years, 11 months when the 2015 regular-season ended, he became the fourth youngest player in major league history to ever win an MVP Award.

Harper’s selection was unanimous – he received all 30 first-place votes and 420 points. Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt received 18 of the 30 second-place votes and finished runner-up with 234 points; Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto was third with 175 points.

“At the beginning of the year, that was my goal from Day 1,” Harper told MLB Network after he was announced as the winner. “Absolutely, to win a World Series and get to the playoffs, but No. 2 to be able to win an MVP and do the things I could to help my team win every single day.”

The selection of Harper in the National League and the Toronto Blue Jays’ Josh Donaldson in the American League brings to seven the number of Perfect Game alumni that have won MLB MVPs, all since 2010. Previous winners were Votto (NL, 2010), Buster Posey (NL, 2012), Andrew McCutchen (NL, 2013), Mike Trout (AL, 2014) and Clayton Kershaw (NL, 2014).

Throughout his entire career ranging from kids league to high school to Perfect Game to junior college and, finally, professional baseball, Harper has always been known for playing the game with reckless abandon. During his first three major league seasons, after incurring numerous injuries running headlong into outfield walls, he was sometimes known simply as reckless.

This season, Harper played in a career-high 153 games for the Nationals – he averaged 119 games his first three years – and enjoyed a ridiculously productive year at the plate. He slashed .330/.460/.649 with an on-base plus slugging (OPS) percentage of 1.109; the .460 on-base, .649 slugging and 1.109 OPS were all major league highs.

He also recorded American League highs of 42 home runs, 118 runs scored with a saber metric WAR of 9.9, and drove in 99 runs. Most impressively, at least in terms of his continued maturation as a hitter and his approach at the plate, was his career-high 124 walks, just 31 fewer than he received his first three seasons combined.

According to MLB.com, he became the youngest player in MLB history with at least 42 home runs and 124 walks in a season, eclipsing the 54 home runs and 150 walks a 25-year-old Babe Ruth accumulated in 1920.

Harper grew up in Las Vegas, Nev., and as the SI cover attests has always been an early riser. He made his Perfect Game debut at the 2005 SoCA Pre-High Showcase in Palos Verdes Peninsula, Calif., as a 13-year-old listed at 6-foot, 180-pounds. His performance prompted a PG scout to note: “(Harper) has a solid, athletic frame and showed a lot of athletic ability all over the field. … (He) showed a short, aggressive swing with good lift and stayed inside the ball well.”

He played in seven PG WWBA tournaments in 2008-09 with the San Diego Show and earned Top Prospect recognition at a pair of PG showcases in 2008, including at the PG Junior National Showcase. He was on a West Team roster at the 2009 PG All-American Classic that included fellow Las Vegas masher Kris Bryant – the Chicago Cubs third baseman who this week won the NL Rookie of the Year Award – and won the 2009 Jackie Robinson Award as the PG National High School Player of the Year.

Harper left high school a year early and earned an equivalency diploma while attending the College of Southern Nevada, a juco in Henderson, Nev. That move made him eligible for the MLB Amateur Draft in 2010 and the Nationals made him the No. 1 overall pick of the first round.

He made his major league debut on April 28, 2012 at age 19 and that season was named the NL Rookie of the Year after putting up a slash line of .270/.340/.477 with 22 home runs, 26 doubles, 59 RBI, 98 runs and 18 stolen bases. It would seem like “Baseball’s Chosen One” had arrived.

Jays’ Donaldson pushes past Trout in AL vote

A little less than a year ago this week, the Oakland A’s traded All-Star third baseman Josh Donaldson to the Toronto Blue Jays for infielder Brett Lawrie, right-hander Kendall Graveman and a couple of prospects. Perhaps no one was more surprised by the move than Donaldson himself, who after two standout seasons (2013-14) in Oakland had become the face of the organization.

The move from Northern California to Southern Ontario couldn’t have gone any more seamlessly for the 29-year-old Donaldson, who in 2015 played in just his third full major league season. His addition to a lineup that what was already a run-scoring machine helped lead the Blue Jays to 93 wins and an American League East Division Championship.

Josh Donaldson, 2003 Underclass World Showcase

On Thursday night, in balloting conducted by the BBWAA, Donaldson was named the American League Most Valuable Player, out-pointing the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout – last year’s winner – and the World Champion Kansas City Royals’ Lorenzo Cain; Donaldson received 23 first-place votes to Trout’s seven, and won on points 385-304.

“I was very blessed to be in the situation I was put in,” Donaldson told MLB Network Thursday night. “I’m very thankful, and I felt like I was able to take advantage of a lot of the opportunities that I had put in front of me.”

Hitting in the No. 2 hole in front of sluggers and run producers Jose Bautista (40 HRs, 114 RBI) and Edwin Encarnacion (39 HRs, 111 RBI), Donaldson was a key cog in a Blue Jays’ offense that led the major leagues in slashing (.269/.340/.457), home runs (232), total bases (2,518) and runs scored (891).

In 158 games – the third straight season he played in 158 games – Donaldson slashed .297/.371/.568, with 41 home runs, 41 doubles and American League-highs of 123 RBI and 122 runs scored; he also had a league-high 352 total bases and 10 sacrifice flies.

Donaldson was a 2004 graduate of Faith Academy in Mobile, Ala., and participated in three Perfect Game events in 2002 and 2003. He debuted at the 2002 18u PG WWBA National Championship in Marietta, Ga., in mid-July, and followed that tournament up with a Top Prospect List performance at the 2003 Underclass World Championship in Fort Myers, Fla., in early January.

That showcase was where Perfect Game scouts got their first real look at the 16-year-old Alabama prospect, and were enthusiastic about what they had seen:

“Wow, a giant surprise to us! This kid is a draft prospect! He runs, has a big-time plus arm from the infield, can hit and flashes power. Very athletic body and good actions in the field and at the plate. Excellent prospect that could end up being a good draft pick. Can play for any college in the country.”

Donaldson knew he had made an impression.

“That was kind of the time when I was trying to show myself to college and stuff like that,” he told Perfect Game during spring training in 2014. “I felt that I had a possibility to get drafted and that was just a great way to go out there and try to get some exposure for me.”

The third and final stop of Donaldson’s PG career was at the 2003 PG WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla., where he was surrounded by greatness, both potential and realized. Andrew McCutchen, now with the Pittsburgh Pirates, was a teammate of Donaldson’s with Team Florida, and the San Francisco Giants’ Buster Posey was another one of the more than 100 future big-leaguers at the event.

“I had played against a lot of (good) competition growing up through all of the travel ball teams and stuff like that,” Donaldson told PG. “But it was actually cool at those (PG events) to see how your tools lined up with a lot of the other kids, too.”

Despite being ranked the No. 145 national prospect in the high school class of 2004, Donaldson went undrafted out of high school. He had a great Plan B, however, and headed off to Auburn University where he enjoyed a fine three-year career: .307, 28 home runs, 42 doubles, 122 RBI and 122 runs scored in 158 games, numbers that compare favorably to a 162-game MLB season.

The Chicago Cubs selected Donaldson with the 48th overall pick in the first-round of the 2007 MLB First-Year Player Draft as a catcher, and then shipped him to the A’s as part of a six-player trade in July 2008. He made his major league debut on April 30, 2010 as a 24-year-old, played in 14 games that season, and then spent all of 2011 and most of 2012 in the minor leagues.

Donaldson played in the Dominican Republic during the winter of 2012-2013 and that’s when he made the full-time transition to third base; he became the A’s regular third baseman during spring training in 2013. That season he slashed .301/.384/.499 with 24 home runs, three triples, 37 doubles, 93 RBI and 89 runs and finished fourth in the AL MVP balloting. He made the first of his two All-Star Game appearances during the 2014 season.