Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman are finalists for the Hank Aaron Award

The Hank Aaron Award has been presented annually since 1999 to the best offensive player in each league. Ten finalists were announced Monday in both leagues, including Dodgers Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman in the National League.

It's clear that Ohtani and Aaron Judge will be taking home these awards, which will be announced on November 14th. Ohtani won the American League award in 2023 and Judge won in 2022.

Freeman is also a former Aaron Award winner, securing the honor during his 2020 MVP season with Atlanta. Let's look at the NL finalists as determined by MLB.com writers.

Ohtani will win this race by a wide margin, but some of the finalists' decisions were notable. Only among the Dodgers did Mookie Betts have slightly better numbers than Freeman in a batting average (.289/.372/.491, 141 wRC+), but he missed eight weeks with a broken hand, leaving Betts with 122 fewer plate appearances than his first-team debut. Baseman teammate.

Teoscar Hernández actually batted 14 more times than Freeman, had similar rate stats, albeit in a different form (.272/.339/.501, 134 wRC+), plus more RBI (99 to 89) and runs scored (84 to 81). . They were tied in offensive WAR (4.6 per player) and nearly tied in offensive WAR on FanGraphs (27.0 for Freeman, 26.8 for Hernández).

Likewise, the Padres' Jurickson Profar had a higher wRC+ (139) and offense (30.6) than his teammate Jackson Merrill, who had a slightly higher oWAR (4.5) than Profar (4.4). But for an award with an obvious choice, it's all about picking nits.

Ohtani led the National League in home runs (54), runs scored (134), RBI (130), on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS (1.036), wRC+, OPS+ (190), total bases (411), extra on base hits (99) and both Baseball Reference WAR (9.2) and FanGraphs WAR (9.1), despite not playing defense at all.

To date, Matt Kemp (2011) is the only Dodger to win the Hank Aaron Award. Ohtani will join him next month.