2022 MLB Futures Betting: Pete Alonso for MVP and Five Other Longshot Wagers To Consider

With May nearing its conclusion, Major League Baseball’s races for playoff berths and the individual awards are beginning to take shape. But there’s still plenty of time to target long-shot candidates who might catapult themselves into contention during the late spring and summer. Here’s five baseball players (and one team) to watch, with all odds from DraftKings.

Byron Buxton, AL MVP (+1100)

We’ve all heard of a compromise candidate benefitting from a split ballot in real-life elections. Could Buxton’s long-awaited breakout campaign lifting the otherwise flawed Minnesota Twins to the top of a one-bid AL Central — and the Los Angeles Angels cruising to a wild card berth with 90-plus wins — be enough to vault him past the Angels’ co-favorite tandem of Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout?

Pete Alonso, NL MVP (+2200)

Since 2000, only four of the 17 players to at least hold a share of their league lead in home runs and RBIs have won the MVP (Ryan Howard in the NL in 2006, Alex Rodriguez in the AL in 2007, Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera in the AL in 2012 and Giancarlo Stanton in the NL in 2017). But with multi-time Cy Young Award winners Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer sidelined indefinitely, a red-hot Alonso — who tied himself atop the NL leaderboard with 10 homers and took the big league lead with 36 RBIs following this walk-off moonshot Thursday — might be the key to keeping the New York Mets atop the NL East.

💥 PETE ALONSO WALK-OFF HOME RUN 💥

METS WIN!!!! pic.twitter.com/0RWLubhjqF

— SNY (@SNYtv) May 19, 2022

Walker Buehler, NL Cy Young (+1200)

A preseason favorite isn’t  usually a longshot, part one. But Scherzer’s out for at least six weeks and the three other pitchers in front of Buehler — defending Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes, Carlos Rodon and Pablo Lopez — all have workload concerns while Buehler leads the league in wins and is on pace to throw 193 innings for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the perennial favorite to win the NL pennant.

Bobby Witt Jr., AL Rookie of the Year (+700)

A preseason favorite isn’t usually a longshot, part two. As we noted last month, the Rookie of the Year award is famously random, and Witt’s slow start for the struggling Kansas City Royals (.225 with four homers, 15 RBIs, five stolen bases and a 94 OPS+) has allowed Jeremy Pena to become the clear favorite. With a 150 OPS+ and a 2.1 WAR for the playoff-bound Houston Astros, Pena doesn’t look like a one-year wonder. But one subpar month for Pena and one big month for Witt would make this a race again.

Alek Thomas, NL Rookie of the Year (+1500)

Seiya Suzuki has slowed a bit for the Chicago Cubs, but he’s still the biggest favorite to win an individual award (-105). And playing for a sub-.500 team doesn’t really factor into Rookie of the Year races (2020 winners Kyle Lewis and Devin Williams played for teams that finished with losing records, as did Ohtani in 2018). But Thomas, who has posted an OPS+ of 153 while racking up 0.4 WAR in his first 12 games for the similarly sub-.500 Arizona Diamondbacks, is worth keeping an eye on in case Suzuki experiences further stumbles.

Boston Red Sox to reach playoffs (+230)

Sure, we noted just last Friday how the Red Sox were on a 105-loss pace. But the Red Sox have gone 5-2 since then while outscoring the opposition 46-34 and twice setting a season-high in runs scored — including Thursday night, when Trevor Story, already being whispered as the next Carl Crawford, hit three homers in a 12-6 win over the Seattle Mariners. There’s still some red flags — their one defeat in a three-game series win over the Astros was a 13-4 loss in which ace Nathan Eovaldi gave up five homers — but the Red Sox are just four games behind the Toronto Blue Jays in the race for the third wild card spot. And if you’re into history sort of repeating itself, remember the 1996 Red Sox started 7-19 and were 13 games under .500 at the All-Star Break before finishing with 85 wins, which was tied for the fifth-most in the AL back in the one wild card era.