Donaldson bests Trout for AL MVP

Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson captured the American League MVP award Thursday following a superb inaugural season in Toronto, preventing Los Angeles Angels star Mike Trout from earning the honor for a second straight year.

In a more lopsided vote than most pundits anticipated, Donaldson received 23 of the 30 first-place votes to join George Bell (1987) as the only players in Blue Jays history to be named AL MVP. Trout, who led the league in wins above replacement, received the other seven first-place votes, while Kansas City Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain finished a distant third.

"I have a lot of respect for Mike Trout and what he's able to do out there on a day-to-day basis," Donaldson told reporters on a conference call. "It's hard for me to sit here and think I beat him. We're not playing basketball or anything like that, not necessarily competing in that way but in a numbers game. ... You know going into the season if you're going to ultimately win an MVP award you're going to have to put up better numbers than Mike."

Acquired from the Oakland Athletics last winter, Donaldson quickly emerged as one of the major cogs in Toronto's prolific offense, smashing a career-high 41 homers with a .939 OPS while leading the league in both runs (122) and runs batted in (123). The 29-year-old missed just four games all season, finishing atop the AL in win probability added (5.75) while ranking among the league's top five in weighted on-base average (.398) and weighted runs created plus (154).

Donaldson, known affectionately as the "Bringer of Rain," has recently been caught in a veritable downpour of awards, receiving the Hank Aaron Award - presented to the best hitter in each league, as voted on by fans and media members - before landing his first Silver Slugger trophy last week.

Serenaded with "M-V-P" chants at Rogers Centre for a good part of the summer, Donaldson's efforts helped Toronto return to the postseason for the first time since 1993, while his flair for the dramatic was pretty much unrivaled. In 2015, Donaldson established a new franchise record with three walk-off home runs, punctuated by a towering solo shot that secured a 5-4 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in the final home game of the regular season.

"I remember the first time I heard it and it was kind of like, 'OK these guys are starting to get pretty serious about what's going on here,'" Donaldson said. "I recognized that I was having a pretty good season at the moment ... but I understood too that there was a lot of season left and my goals aren't necessarily to win MVP's but to help my team win."