Aaron Judge was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player unanimously on Thursday, capturing all 30 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Judge’s second MVP — two years after his first, when he beat out current National League MVP favorite Shohei Ohtani in 2022 — came on the heels of one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history.

Judge led the majors in homers (58), RBIs (144), OPS (1.159) and FanGraphs wins above replacement (11.2) in a 2024 season that saw the 6-foot-7, 282-pound slugger spend most of his time in center field and lead the New York Yankees to a pennant. Judge’s 223 adjusted OPS was the highest among right-handed hitters since 1900, according to ESPN Research. He became the third player ever with at least 50 homers and an adjusted OPS of 200 or more, joining Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds.

Bobby Witt Jr., the Kansas City Royals’ young superstar shortstop, received all 30 second-place votes. Judge’s Yankee counterpart, current free agent Juan Soto, finished third. Judge is the seventh Yankee to win multiple MVPs, joining Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Alex Rodriguez and Roger Maris. Before Judge, Mantle’s 1956 season was the only one in Yankees history to yield a unanimous MVP.

Since his first full season in 2017, when he was named AL Rookie of the Year and finished second in MVP voting, Judge leads the majors in FanGraphs wins above replacement (51.4), weighted runs created plus (176), slugging percentage (.611) and home runs (311) despite missing significant time in three of those eight seasons. He broke the AL home run record in 2022, going deep 62 times, but he was better in practically every other offensive category in 2024, slashing .322/.458/.701 while hitting behind Soto.

Of Judge’s 58 home runs, a whopping 23 gave his team the lead. But his season ended in bitter disappointment. The Yankees lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, with Judge going 4-for-18 and making a key error in the decisive Game 5. A rough October aside, Judge’s MVP victory had long seemed obvious. So obvious, perhaps, that the other two finalists, Witt and Soto, didn’t even appear on MLB Network’s award presentation.

Yankees legend Derek Jeter was called on to announce Judge as the winner.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The St. Petersburg City Council voted Thursday to spend more than $23 million to repair the hurricane-shredded roof of Tropicana Field, with the goal of having the home of the Tampa Bay Rays ready for the 2026 season.

The vote followed a decision earlier this week by the Pinellas County Commission to delay until December a vote on revenue bonds needed to finance a new, $1.3 billion Rays ballpark, a project that is in serious jeopardy according to Rays executives.

“I can’t say I’m confident about anything,” Rays co-president Brian Auld told the council members, who were scheduled later Thursday to vote on their own bonds to pay their share of the new stadium.

The Trop’s translucent fiberglass roof was ripped to pieces on Oct. 9 when Hurricane Milton swept ashore just south of Tampa Bay. There was also significant water damage inside the ballpark, with a city estimate of the total repair costs pegged at $55.7 million.

The extensive repairs cannot be finished before the 2026 season, city documents show. The Rays made a deal with the Yankees to play next season at 11,000-seat Steinbrenner Field, New York’s spring training home across the bay in Tampa.

Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said MLB wants to give the Rays and Tampa-area politicians time to figure out a path forward given the disruption caused by the hurricane. Assuming Tropicana Field is repaired, the Rays are obligated to play there for three more seasons.

“We’re committed to the fans in Tampa Bay,” Manfred said at an owners meeting. “Given all that’s happened in that market, we’re focused on our franchise in Tampa Bay right now.”

The vote Thursday was to get moving on the roof portion of the repair. Once that’s done, crews could begin working on laying down a new baseball field, fixing damaged seating and office areas and a variety of electronic systems — which would require another vote to approve money for the remaining restoration.

The city previously voted to spend $6.5 million to prevent further damage to the unroofed Trop. Several council members said before the vote on the $23.7 million to fix the roof that the city is contractually obligated to do so.

“I don’t see a way out of it. We have a contract that’s in place,” council member Gina Driscoll said. “We’re obligated to do it. We are going to fix the roof.”

The council voted 4-3 to approve the roof repair. Members who opposed it said there wasn’t enough clarify on numerous issues, including how much would be covered by the ballpark’s insurance and what amount might be provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

They also noted that city residents who are struggling to repair their homes and businesses damaged by hurricanes Helene and Milton are dismayed when they see so many taxpayer dollars going to baseball.

“Why are we looking to expend so much money right away when there is so much uncertainty?” council member Richie Floyd said.

The new Rays ballpark — now likely to open in 2029, if at all — is part of a larger urban renovation project known as the Historic Gas Plant District, which refers to a predominantly Black neighborhood that was forced out to make way for construction of Tropicana Field and an interstate highway spur.

The broader $6.5 billion project would transform an 86-acre (34-hectare) tract in the city’s downtown, with plans in the coming years for a Black history museum, affordable housing, a hotel, green space, entertainment venues, and office and retail space. There’s the promise of thousands of jobs as well.

St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch, a prime mover behind the overall project, said it’s not time to give up.

“We believe there is a path forward to success,” the mayor said.

NEW YORK — For Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, the recent conclusion of Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy created an “overwhelming sense of relief” with short-term certainty as the league eyes its long-term media rights plan.

“I think the good news is that we did a pretty good job in terms of maximizing the economics for the clubs,” Manfred said Wednesday during the owners meetings. “We never lost a game. And we have a lot of flexibility come 2028, which was our primary focus.”

A bankruptcy judge approved Diamond’s reorganization plan last Thursday, setting the country’s largest operator of regional sports networks to emerge from bankruptcy 20 months after initially filing for Chapter 11.

Diamond moves forward with at least six MLB teams, while MLB, at the moment, possesses the local media rights — linear TV rights and in-market, direct-to-consumer streaming rights — for seven teams. The six clubs that negotiated new deals with Diamond — the Atlanta Braves, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays — will all have their contracts expire by 2028, when MLB’s major national deals with ESPN, Fox and Turner are slated to end. That is not a coincidence.

MLB hopes to have roughly half its teams’ broadcast rights to negotiate with companies then. The league’s ultimate goal is to hold linear and digital rights for all 30 clubs to have available for negotiations with networks. MLB believes nationalizing the broadcast rights would maximize revenue and eliminate local blackouts, which would expand reach. But that would require compelling clubs with stable regional sports networks, a few of which at least partially own the networks, to eventually relinquish their control and join MLB’s cluster. That group includes the Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees.

“Everything that we do, we believe we have to convince the clubs that it’s in their economic interest to do that,” Manfred said. “And I think a big piece of that is the changes that have taken place in the media landscape. We had a long conversation about this [Wednesday]. More games on national outlets is an important key to maximizing your revenue. Once you realize that, you can begin to build a consensus around the idea that we need to be more national.”

MLB will broadcast games for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins and San Diego Padres in 2025, though the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals are still undecided and could technically join as well. The Seattle Mariners are expected to join in some capacity in the near future.

Adding Diamond’s teams to that mix could ensure that at least 14 to 16 teams are part of a national umbrella, with others possibly joining within these next four years.

But the biggest question surrounds the big-market teams who would make MLB’s offering far more appealing to buyers but would also be far less willing to split local-media revenue evenly. On Wednesday, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner, whose club owns 25% of the YES Network, said discussions had not yet begun on the matter.

“We just haven’t gotten into it enough that I could give you an intelligent answer to that,” Steinbrenner said. “We haven’t gotten into it. We only own 25% of YES. We got a lot of other owners. And, you know, that’s a discussion to have at some point with them — or not have with them. But we’re not there yet.”

New York Mets owner Steve Cohen declined to comment on the subject this week. Unlike the Yankees with YES, the Mets don’t own a portion of SNY, which controls the rights to Mets games through 2030.

Packaging teams together would also require approval from the players’ union because it would mark a change to revenue sharing. But getting there requires the heavy lifting of getting all 30 teams on board.

“Now there are mechanics and existing agreements that we’re going to have to work through,” Manfred said. “But if you’re making a change that you believe is going to substantially increase your revenue over the long haul, it gives you that great thing that helps you solve a lot of problems. It’s called money.”