Had he not been hit in the face with a pitch late in the 2014 season, Giancarlo Stanton might have already won the Most Valuable Player award as his league’s best player.
The slugger for the Marlins suffered no such ill-timed misfortune last season, though, cranking nearly five dozen home runs and becoming the National League MVP.
Stanton was the top vote-getter for the coveted award, finishing ahead of Arizona’s Paul Goldschmidt and Cincinnati’s Joey Votto. He became not only the first Marlin to take MVP honors, but only the seventh N.L. player over the past 70 years to win it while playing for a team with a losing record.