Baseball’s Triple Crown — leading a league in batting average, home runs and RBIs — has been rare in the modern era, with Miguel Cabrera in 2012 the only hitter to achieve it since 1967. According to the report, Houston’s Yordan Alvarez spent much of the 2026 season on a path to join Cabrera. On Aug. 2 he went 4-for-5 with three doubles and two RBIs, raising his average to .330 and leading the American League by 29 points over Tampa Bay’s Yandy Diaz while topping the circuit with 35 home runs and 84 RBIs.
That dominance extended beyond the AL: Alvarez’s 1.092 OPS on Aug. 2 was 145 points higher than the National League leader, Juan Soto, according to the report. Since that date, however, Alvarez has cooled. In the 35 games after Aug. 2 he hit .242/.380/.383 with three homers and 12 RBIs, narrowing his batting lead to five points over Tampa Bay’s Chandler Simpson and falling behind Junior Caminero in home runs (40-38) and Pete Alonso in RBIs (100-96).
Despite the slide, Alvarez’s season remained remarkable. The report noted his OPS still sat at 1.016, with Willson Contreras the second-best AL mark hovering around .900. The last time a league leader posted an OPS above 1.000 while no other hitter exceeded .900 was 1946, when Stan Musial led the NL with a 1.021 OPS and Whitey Kurowski was second at .853.
The late-season decline has opened up the American League MVP conversation. According to the report, recent MVP ballots have often been lopsided — Shohei Ohtani’s selections were unanimous, as were Aaron Judge’s 2024 win and Ronald Acuña Jr.’s 2023 award. The report also cited past voting patterns: Judge outscored Ohtani 28-2 in 2022, and the last time more than two players drew first-place votes was the National League in 2022 when Paul Goldschmidt received 22, Manny Machado seven and Nolan Arenado one.
According to Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs combined figures cited in the report, Alvarez ranked third in ‘combo WAR’ entering Sunday. The report listed Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. at 6.4 combo WAR, noting a large portion of Witt’s value came from elite defense and that the Royals were in last place, underscoring the complexities of separating offensive value from defensive contributions in the MVP debate.
