Bonds, who has set records for walks and intentional walks, hopes the Giants add another slugger to support him in the lineup.
"I'm looking very much forward to next season," he said. "I started training just two weeks after the season. I'm training even harder this year than I did last year. I really want to see if I can put things together without my father for the first time."
Pujols hit a major league-high .359 with 43 homers and 124 RBIs and led the major leagues with 137 runs. He became just the 10th player to finish second in consecutive MVP votes, the first since the Dodgers' Mike Piazza in 1996 and 1997.
San Francisco players have won the award four straight times, with Jeff Kent winning in 2000, when Bonds finished second in the voting for the second time. The Yankees accomplished that feat twice with Yogi Berra (1954-1955) and Mickey Mantle (1956-1957), and Roger Maris (1960-1961), Mantle (1962) and Elston Howard (1963).
Bonds gets a US$500,000 bonus for winning the award. Sheffield, who became a free agent after the season, earned US$75,000 for finishing third. Florida's Juan Pierre gets US$20,000 for finishing 10th.
Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News, Don Ketchum of The Arizona Republic and Bill Zack of Morris News Service, who covers the Braves, voted Pujols first. Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post Dispatch voted Sheffield first.
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