When this baseball season began, it felt easy to forecast the major award winners. The four champions from 2025 all looked primed to repeat in 2026. But the season has not exactly worked out that way. Paul Skenes, the 2025 National League Cy Young award winner, has seen his ERA nearly double. Tarik Skubal, Skenes’ Cy Young counterpart in the American League, is now a Dodger. Aaron Judge, the American League MVP, just returned from an injury layoff that lasted more than three months.And as for Shohei Ohtani …Well, let’s take some questions for this week’s mailbag, in which we’re talking all things award season. The questions have been edited for clarity.Pete Crow-Armstrong will win National League MVP with an asterisk, given it will be revealed that Shohei Ohtani needs at least two medical procedures the week after the Dodgers’ season ends. PCA has had a great year! But it’s a bummer to see health be what stops Ohtani’s run of dominance. We were robbed of a classic MVP race by the breakdown of Ohtani’s knees, arm and elbow. Hopefully Pete and Shohei can both go end-to-end next year, full throttle. — Jacob N. Pete Crow-Armstrong entered Wednesday worth 9.9 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs. He led the National League in OPS (.948), wOBA (.402) and wRC+ (158). He ranked second in stolen bases. He plays strong defense in center field. If that sort of season requires an asterisk, well, I don’t know what to tell you.If Ohtani made it back as a pitcher and maintained his level as a hitter, that would have made for a fascinating debate. Which is more valuable: 155 games of elite outfield defense or 100 innings of elite pitching? You could see a case for both sides. But in these past few weeks, as Ohtani has broken down, Crow-Armstrong has gone supernova. PCA looks like the runaway favorite to win now. That might have been different, if Ohtani, who is headed to the injured list, had stayed healthy.But, of course, health was always going to be what stopped Ohtani, whether it was this season or the next or some season down the road. His primary competition has always been the limitations of his own body. That is what slowed him when he debuted in 2018 and again when he was in the midst of a three-year run of dominance in 2023. I will be fascinated to see how Ohtani and the Dodgers navigate his next few seasons. His performance as a pitcher made clear that he can be elite: a 1.79 ERA in 14 starts with 95 strikeouts in 85 2/3 innings. Neither party will want to just mothball that sort of ability. But the idea of Ohtani holding up across a full season, as he gets deeper into his 30s, feels more and more remote.No matter how the White Sox finish, if Will Venable isn’t the AL Manager of the Year, then cancel the award. From 121 losses to postseason (likely) is amazing. Yes, it’s the AL Central – but tell me with a straight face you picked the White Sox as the division winner. — Lance S. I can tell you with a straight face that I picked the Royals. And technically they have not yet been eliminated. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.No, Lance, I have to say I agree. The Manager of the Year award is the most imprecise trophy given out by the BBWAA every fall. The managerial job has grown so complex, and where a manager begins and a front office ends can be difficult to discern. So it can be challenging to assign either credit or blame to the skipper. Such are the perils of modern middle management.As a default, the Manager of the Year voters tend to reward the manager whose team most exceeded expectations. Venable is the clear choice in the American League this year. The White Sox were projected to 67 games in 2026, according to FanGraphs. They entered Wednesday on pace for 84. The Guardians may still run them down in the American League Central. But no matter the result, this season represents a leap forward for the franchise. Venable should receive some hardware as a reward.I know injuries have played a big role, but have you seen top-three MVP finishers fall off so far the next year as Cal Raleigh, Aaron Judge, and Jose Ramirez have? — Kale F.That is a great question, and I spent a good little while this week trying to research it, at least for the past couple decades. It is a really uncommon occurrence. I found some individual collapses from the recent past, but no season-to-season collapse for a trio akin to the one experienced by this group.