Munetaka Murakami and Yoshinobu Yamamoto already had a few things in common before the NPB Awards.
Both are rising stars who helped Japan win a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in the summer and led their teams — the Tokyo Yakult Swallows and Orix Buffaloes — to their respective league pennants in the fall. They were both All-Stars who put up big numbers during the regular season, before helping their teams reach the Japan Series.
Now they have one more thing in common: they're both MVPs.