Milwaukee’s Braun wins NL MVP award

NEW YORK - Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun won the NL Most Valuable Player Award on Tuesday after helping lead the Brewers to their first division title in nearly 30 years.

The left fielder received 20 of 32 first-place votes and 388 points in voting announced by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

“I’m not going to pretend like I wasn’t anxious or nervous because I was,’’ said Braun, who was sitting on the balcony of his home in Malibu, California, when he received the call that he had won.

Los Angeles center fielder Matt Kemp, who came close to winning the Triple Crown, received 10 first-place votes and finished second with 332 points. Braun’s teammate Prince Fielder finished third with 229 points, and Arizona’s Justin Upton finished fourth with 214 points. Fielder and Upton each received one first-place vote.

St. Louis’ Albert Pujols finished fifth. It was the 11th straight year the three-time MVP was in the top 10 in balloting.

Braun led the NL with a .597 slugging percentage and had a chance to overtake Jose Reyes for the batting title on the last day of the season but finished second with a .332 average. The four-time All-Star had 33 homers, 111 RBIs, 109 runs scored and stole 33 bases as Milwaukee won a franchise-best 96 games. His 77 extra-base hits was tops in the league.

AP