Three Chicago Cubs were part of the 2020 NL MVP ballot. One of them was Yu Darvish, who received six votes at various places in the top 10 to total 14 points after an immaculate season on the mound. He finished with a league-best eight wins to go along with 93 strikeouts and a 2.01 ERA in 76 innings of work, good for second place in the Cy Young race. Another Cub who received a vote was relief pitcher Ryan Tepera, whose amazing 3.92 ERA in 20.2 innings pitched surprisingly only garnered a single vote.
Just kidding. That one was all due to a mistake.
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The final Cub to receive a vote was outfielder Ian Happ, and though his tally equaled that of Tepera — just one tenth-place vote — it wasn't a mistake. Happ's 9.5 fWAR paced the Cubs, as did his 12 HR and .866 OPS. He also went without making an error in either of his two primary positions, center and left field.
And Happ definitely didn't take the vote for granted, going to Twitter to thank his lone supporter on the ballot.
When another Twitter user helped to point out that the voter was Joe Frisaro of MLB.com, the two engaged in a nice back-and-forth.
The rest of Frisaro's MVP ballot featured Freddie Freeman in first, who would go on to win the award, as well as Fernando Tatis as the runner-up. Tatis was notably absent from the list of the three NL MVP finalists based on the votes, which comprised of Freeman, Mookie Betts (third on Frisaro's ballot) and Manny Machado (fifth on Frisaro's ballot).
Across the way, White Sox star Jose Abreu took home the AL MVP.
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