It may feel like a distant memory, but the 2022 MLB season began in darkness. The choice by the owners to unanimously lock out the players on Dec. 2, 2021, froze the sport and jeopardized the coming season. For 99 days, as the owners and the MLB Players Association butted heads over the terms of a new collective bargaining agreement, nothing much happened. There were moments when it looked like a baseball season might not happen at all. It was a bad time.
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The fog lifted on March 10, when the union accepted a proposal by the league and the two sides avoided the disaster of an extended work stoppage. Once the season got going, the acrimony of the lockout faded. In time, the game itself captivated. There were individual campaigns worth noting, and a postseason worth savoring. To recap the 2022 season, here are a smattering of the best performances.
Player of the Year, 1A: Aaron Judge
By now, you know the numbers. But they bear repeating. Aaron Judge hit 62 home runs this past season, the most by any player since 2001 and the largest tally ever by a player in the American League. If the sudden reverence for Roger Maris’ junior-circuit record from 1961 felt like a canny way for MLB executives to market Judge while obscuring chemically enhanced subsequent achievements, it should not obscure just how remarkable Judge’s season was.
Consider the run-scoring environment. Players will tell you: It stinks to be a hitter in this era. The pitchers throw harder than ever. The breaking balls are nastier. The bullpens are deeper. It is not a fun time to hit. Judge still made it look like a breeze. During a season in which the average batter slugged .395, he slugged .686. His 211 OPS+ suggests he was more than twice as effective as the average hitter. FanGraphs credited him with 11.4 wins above replacement, the most by any player since Barry Bonds; dating back to 1871, only 26 hitters have cleared the 11-win barrier.
So those are the numbers. They led to another number: $360 million, spread across nine years in a free-agent deal with the Yankees, the largest average annual value ($40 million) for a position player in baseball history. Judge acted as the central character in the 2022 season — the biggest player, in the biggest market, doing things that hadn’t been done in decades. He ran away with the AL MVP.
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And yet …
Player of the Year, 1B: Shohei Ohtani
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after one of his 219 strikeouts. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
What Shohei Ohtani did for the Angels in 2022 may have been even more incredible. It may sound crass to discuss the two-way supernova’s achievements in terms of money, but let’s try for a moment. Jacob deGrom just signed a five-year, $185 million contract with the Rangers, a few weeks before Carlos Correa agreed to a 12-year, $315 million deal with the Mets. In his final year as a Met, deGrom posted a 3.08 ERA in 64 1/3 innings. In his lone season as a Twin, Correa hit 22 home runs with an .834 OPS.
Here is what Ohtani did in 2022: He posted a 2.33 ERA in 166 innings while hitting 34 home runs with an .875 OPS.
By now, Ohtani Facts land with an almost numbing familiarity. Imagine José Abreu combined with Max Fried, or Pete Alonso paired with Kevin Gausman, or a tag team of Corbin Burnes and Juan Soto. Those duos all represent rough approximations of Ohtani’s individual brilliance in 2022. How long Ohtani can continue at this rate is an open question. His singularity is unprecedented. Judge was, indeed, the star of the show in 2022. He deserved the MVP. But Ohtani gave the most extraordinary performance.
Pitcher of the Year: Justin Verlander
Justin Verlander won his third Cy Young Award. (Troy Taormina / USA Today)
It is not easy to vote for the Cy Young Award these days. Different teams offer different players different opportunities. Sandy Alcántara, the Marlins’ workhorse, threw 228 2/3 innings, 23 2/3 more than any other pitcher, in part because he was terrific and in part because Miami permitted him to finish games. Other clubs operated with a more protective approach, especially after the lockout rushed the start of the season.
Which statistic matters most for pitchers in this era? Is it innings? ERA? FIP? Strikeout rate? Wins? In returning to the mound after missing nearly two full seasons because of Tommy John surgery, Justin Verlander checked all the boxes. He led the sport with a 1.75 ERA and ranked fourth in FIP. He struck out more than a batter per inning. He won 18 games, more than any pitcher in the AL. He did all this at 39, with a surgically repaired right elbow, for an Astros team that won 106 games and a championship. Along the way, Verlander collected his first victory in a World Series game. It was a banner year for the future Hall of Famer — and it netted him an $86.6 million payday in free agency with the Mets.
Best Pitching Performance of the Year: Spencer Strider
The 17th start of Spencer Strider’s career took place on a sweltering night at Truist Park in Atlanta in September. Over the preceding three months, Strider had earned a place in the Braves rotation by overpowering hitters with his simple but devastating combination of fastballs and sliders. His Sept. 1 outing against the Rockies demonstrated the apex of that approach.
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Across eight innings of two-hit baseball, Strider struck out 16 batters, the most by any pitcher in 2022. He fanned the side in the second and the seventh. In the eighth, with a pair of runners aboard, Strider whiffed third baseman Elehuris Montero with a slider and did the same to outfielder Sean Bouchard to strand the runners. He finished the night with a 94 Game Score, just ahead of Reds starter Tyler Mahle’s 93 in a 12-strikeout shutout of Arizona on June 14 and Cardinals starter Jordan Montgomery’s 92 in a one-hit shutout against the Cubs on Aug. 22.
Most Unhittable Pitch of the Year: Dylan Cease’s slider
With apologies to Ohtani’s slider, Verlander’s four-seam fastball and Alcántara’s changeup, Dylan Cease’s breaking ball earned the title for the least hitter-friendly offering of the 2022 season. Cease leaned on his slider during a breakout campaign in which he posted a 2.20 ERA, struck out 11.1 batters per nine innings and finished second to Verlander in the AL Cy Young voting.
Cease upped his usage of the pitch in 2022, throwing it nearly 43 percent of the time, a 12 percent increase from the previous season. And why wouldn’t he? The sharpness of its movement, plus its 10 mph separation from his 97 mph fastball, handcuffs hitters as the bottom drops out. Opponents batted .128 against it and whiffed 43.3 percent of the time. In terms of advanced metrics, both Baseball Savant and FanGraphs rated it as the most effective pitch of the season.
Entrance of the Year: Edwin Díaz
Mr. Met “plays” the trumpet as Edwin Díaz enters a game. (Brad Penner / USA Today)
The soundtrack of the summer in Queens was “Narco,” a relatively obscure track from the Dutch group Blasterjaxx and a fellow from Australia named Timmy Trumpet. It was Trumpet, of course, who played the horn hook that became instantly recognizable as the Mets soared to 101 wins in 2022. It signaled the entrance of Edwin Díaz, who emerged as the best closer in baseball last season.
Credit goes to SNY, the Mets television network, for recognizing the cinematic potential of Díaz’s entrance. The fervor crescendoed when Trumpet himself flew to New York to play the instrument live. It will be up to Díaz to see if he can extend his dominance across his new five-year, $102 million contract, and give “Narco” the staying power that “Enter Sandman” held for Mariano Rivera or “California Love” held for Kenley Jansen.
Farewell of the Year: Albert Pujols
Albert Pujols’ 700th career home run came against his former team, the Dodgers. (Gary A. Vasquez / USA Today)
When Albert Pujols signed with the Cardinals on March 28, 10 years after bolting from St. Louis for Anaheim, the headlines wrote themselves. Pujols had revived his career as a bench player with the Dodgers in 2021, rediscovering joy in the sport after a mostly miserable decade with the Angels. The Cardinals hoped Pujols could offer guidance to their youngsters along with some occasional pop off the bench. The team hoped it wouldn’t have to cut ties with the future Hall of Famer before the season ended.
Pujols did far more than that. In the second half, he looked reborn, like the slugger he had been for all those years in the 2000s. He hit 18 homers after the All-Star break, with a 1.103 OPS, transforming a chase for 700 homers from a pipe dream into a reality. Pujols would finish with 703, creating indelible memories along the way.
Revival of the Year: Citizens Bank Park
There was a time, during the Phillies’ renaissance from 2007 to 2011, that no ballpark rocked like Citizens Bank Park. The franchise boasted a sellout streak of 257 games, a stretch that ended in the summer of 2012 as the Phillies spiraled into a decade of irrelevance and worse. When postseason baseball finally returned to Philadelphia, for Game 3 of the National League Division Series, the city and its residenta were ready. The park served as a raucous setting for the rest of October, culminating in a ridiculous atmosphere for Game 3 of the World Series.
No, the Phillies did not win it all. And, yes, it might actually be louder at Minute Maid Park, where the combination of crowd noise, train whistles and fireworks has served as the soundtrack to postseason baseball for years. But the Astros have been at this for quite some time now. To see the Phillies back on the big stage, with a rowdy fan base behind them, was a refreshing sight.
Call of the Year: Joe Davis on Bryce Harper
It doesn’t get much better than this. Davis, who replaced Joe Buck as Fox’s lead play-by-play announcer, was ready when Bryce Harper went deep in the National League Championship Series against San Diego and put the Phillies on the verge of the World Series. In one simple phrase — “Harper … the swing of his life!” — Davis found a fitting encapsulation for the former teen star’s journey to that moment.
From there, Davis took a page out of the playbook of Vin Scully, whom he had replaced in his day job with the Dodgers. He stayed quiet for 50 seconds, letting the roars of the crowd, the clanging of the Citizens Bank Park bell and the shouts from the Phillies dugout tell the story. Just tremendous theater, perfectly displayed for the viewer.
Umpiring Effort of the Year: Pat Hoberg, World Series Game 2
Umpiring is not a thankless job — the umps get paid, after all. But it is the sort of profession where you only get noticed if things go awry. So credit to Hoberg, who was behind the plate in the second game of the World Series, for drilling all 129 ball-and-strike calls, according to the fine folks at Umpire Scorecards.
Biggest Swing of the Year: Yordan Alvarez, World Series Game 6
Yordan Alvarez, Houston’s imperious slugger, did not hit particularly well in the Fall Classic. He went 3-for-23. He struck out in more than a third of his at-bats. He stayed quiet, oh so quiet, until it mattered most. With runners at the corners in the sixth inning of the final game of the World Series, Alvarez reacted as a 99 mph sinker from Phillies reliever José Alvarado leaked over the plate. Alvarez vaporized it. He obliterated it. He made the baseball disappear. In the process, just as he had with a titanic swing against Seattle earlier in the postseason, Alvarez put the Astros on a path to a championship.
The ball landed beyond the batter’s eye in center field. The estimated distance was 450 feet. It might as well have been a mile. The crowd made Fox’s cameras shake. A group of Astros vaulted the dugout railing to celebrate — even if victory was still three innings away. It was a nice reminder, after an offseason ruined by a lockout, after so much acrimony and recrimination, why baseball remains worth following. The sport creates moments that linger in the mind’s eye, long after they pass. The 2022 season brought plenty.
GO DEEPER The best and worst performances of 2022: Reliving the highs and lows of the year in sports
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Rich von Bilberstein / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images; Elsa / Getty Images)