Nelson Cruz named Twins MVP, also wins leadership award

Nel­son Cruz was cho­sen the Twins most valu­able play­er for 2019, and also won the team's Bob Allison Award for lead­er­ship.

Tay­lor Rog­ers won the team's top pitch­er a­ward, and Luis Arraez was named the rook­ie of the year on Tues­day in voting by the Twin Cities chap­ter of the Baseball Writ­ers Association of America.

Cruz, signed be­fore the sea­son to a two-year con­tract, hit 41 home runs, drove in 108 runs and bat­ted .311. He led the Twins in all three cate­go­ries, a­mong play­ers who qual­i­fied for a bat­ting title (502 plate ap­pear­an­ces).

Rog­ers had a 2.61 ERA and 30 saves in 60 ap­pear­an­ces. Arraez, pri­mar­i­ly an in­field­er, hit .334 in 366 plate ap­pear­an­ces.

Catch­er Mitch Garv­er, who had 31 home runs, won most im­proved play­er; cen­ter field­er Byron Bux­ton was cho­sen de­fen­sive play­er of the year, and pitch­er Kyle Gib­son won the me­di­a's Good Guy Award.

"Ev­er­y­one is very de­serv­ing of the awards," Garv­er said via text message. "Rog­ers did ev­er­y­thing and more that we need­ed for a clos­er, and he's one of the best lefthanded re­liev­ers in the league. Nelly was, as we ex­pect­ed, a huge role mod­el and lead­er on and off the field. We couldn't have done ev­er­y­thing we did this year with­out those two guys."

The Upper Midwest play­er of the year is Nick Anderson, who was born in Cros­by and grew up in Brai­nerd. Anderson, 29, pitched 68 games in his rook­ie sea­son for Mi­am­i and Tam­pa Bay and struck out 110 in 65 in­nings. He also made four postseason ap­pear­an­ces for the Rays.

Award win­ners will be honored at the Twins Diamond Awards on Jan. 23 at the Depot, be­fore Twins Fest week­end.

Form­er Twin Jus­tin Morneau will get the Kir­by Puck­ett Award that day for Twins alum­ni com­muni­ty serv­ice, and the team's mi­nor league play­ers of the year — out­field­er Trev­or Larnach and pitch­er Randy Dobnak — also will be rec­og­nized.

PHIL MILL­ER