MVP Dreams and Cooperstown's Future

I’m looking hard at the 2031 Baseball Hall of Fame Induction ceremony.

I mean, look:

Clayton Kershaw has not officially announced that he’s retiring at the end of the season, but you have to believe he will. He’s got his 3,000 strikeouts. He’s got two World Series rings with a chance at a third (though the Dodgers are giving off some bad vibes — more on that later). Baseball folks think he will retire; that’s why they gave him that All-Star appearance. So that’s one.

Max Scherzer will probably retire. He’s limping through another injury-plagued season, and he turns 41 next week, and what is left for him to prove?

And Justin Verlander might not have a choice but to retire. He has talked endlessly about pitching until age 45, which is still three years away. But he’s 0-8 with a 5 ERA and he seems to be coming around to the inalienable fact that age comes for all of us.

“I feel like I was pretty easy to hit tonight,” he said after getting rocked by the A’s on Independence Day. In his last outing against Toronto, he gave up nine hits in 2⅔ innings and didn’t strike out a batter.

These are three of the greatest pitchers who ever lived.

I firmly believe a player should retire when and only when they’re ready — and not when anybody else says so. That said, it’s pretty clear that it’s highly unlikely to get better for any of them. 

I hope to be in Cooperstown on that July day in 2031 when they’re all inducted into the Hall.

And, after they’re in, there’s no telling when we will see another starting pitcher elected.

There’s something else about that 2031 Hall of Fame ceremony: It might feature the last two pitchers to EVER be named MVP — Kersh and Verlander.

I’ve been thinking about pitcher MVPs (as my dream suggests) because of a certain guy in Detroit — but to start, let’s look back at the history of pitcher MVPs for a moment. It used to be pretty common.

In the 1930s, there were five pitchers MVPs: Carl Hubbell (twice), Lefty Grove, Dizzy Dean, and the under-appreciated Bucky Walters. It’s still a bit too early to tell you about my next-next project — I hope to tell you about the book I just finished shortly, and this would be the book after that one — but I can tell you that Bucky Walters’ 1939 season might just be a part of it.

In the 1940s, there were four pitcher MVP seasons, but they were all during World WAR II — Hal Newhouser twice, Spud Chandler and Mort Cooper.

There were three more pitcher MVP seasons in the 1950s, including the first relief pitcher to win the award: Philadelphia’s Jim Konstanty in 1950. Looking back, that was a bananas pick from the voters — but the voters were desperate to pick someone from those Whiz Kid Phillies, and they apparently didn’t want to give it to Robin Roberts, who won 20 games and pitched twice as many innings as Konstanty. The voters’ refusal to give the award to Roberts, even though he was the best pitcher in the league each year from 1951-1954, is what directly led to the invention of the Cy Young Award.

The other two pitchers to win the award in the 1950s: the Yankees’ Bobby Shantz and the Dodgers’ Don Newcombe.

Three pitchers won the MVP in the 1960s, including two in 1968 — Bob Gibson and Denny McLain. Sandy Koufax won the other one in ’63 — Koufax probably should have won the award again in 1966; he had one more first-place vote than Roberto Clemente that year, but lost out in part because one voter left Koufax off the ballot entirely.

This led to the classic Dick Young lead:

Only one pitcher won the MVP in the 1970s — Vida Blue in 1971. In retrospect, it’s pretty wild that Ron Guidry lost out on the MVP in 1978 when he went 25-3 with a 1.74 ERA. The award went to Jim Rice, who became the first player in 19 years to total 400 total bases. But Guidry was better.

The 1980s, 1990s and 2000s were weird. In those three decades, four pitchers won MVPs … and three of them were relievers. It’s very funny to look back on that time period to see how deeply voters fell in love with relief pitchers. In addition to Rollie Fingers, Willie Hernandez and Dennis Eckersley winning MVPs, Steve Bedrosian, Mark Davis and Eric Gagné won Cy Young Awards. Kooky!

The one starter to win an MVP between Vida Blue in 1971 and Justin Verlander in 2011 was Roger Clemens in 1986. It’s funny because several of the greatest pitching seasons in baseball history happened during that stretch — Steve Carlton’s 1972, Guidry in 1978, Dwight Gooden in 1985, Pedro Martínez in 1999 and 2000, Randy Johnson in 2002, Greg Maddux in 1995 and so on.

Then in a flash, Verlander won his MVP in 2011 and Kershaw won it in 2014.

And no pitcher has won it since (unless you count Shohei in 2021 and 2023). In fact, only one non-Shohei starting pitcher has received even ONE first-place vote since Kershaw won the award. Can you name him? 

I bring all this up now to discuss, yes, Tarik Skubal.