As Major League Baseball reaches the halfway point of the 2026 season, the conventional midseason favorites are clear, according to ESPN: Shohei Ohtani for National League MVP, Jacob Misiorowski for NL Cy Young, JJ Wetherholt for NL Rookie of the Year, Yordan Alvarez for American League MVP, Cam Schlittler for AL Cy Young and Kevin McGonigle for AL Rookie of the Year.
This project, however, hands out a different set of hardware that celebrates narrative as much as statistics. The Players Are People, Too Award goes to Kansas City rookie catcher Carter Jensen. In a spring training video the Royals posted, Jensen said he needs six to eight alarms to wake and called the habit “embarrassing.” The comment gained more weight on April 2, when Jensen overslept and missed his turn to catch and give veteran Salvador Perez a day off, according to ESPN.
The 50 Cent Memorial Cup was awarded to Miami Dolphins quarterback-turned-first-pitch-giver Malik Willis after an extraordinary misfire. Willis’ toss sailed roughly 10 feet over the head of Marlins infielder Graham Pauley and caromed off the backstop. Willis later wrote in the Instagram comments on the Marlins’ post: “I slipped,” according to ESPN.
Los Angeles Angels outfielder Jo Adell received the Lufthansa Award after what ESPN described as the first instance in MLB history of a player robbing three home runs in a single game. The sequence included a backhanded grab just over the yellow line on a drive by Cal Raleigh early in the game, a ninth-inning snare of a J.P. Crawford pull and another takeback in the eighth on a Josh Naylor hit. The game featured an early 1-0 lead for the Angels when Zach Neto hit a leadoff home run in the bottom of the first, according to ESPN.
These midseason selections are intended to acknowledge the memorable and sometimes improbable moments that shape the season beyond the leaderboard, according to ESPN.
