Something completely obvious occurred to me for the first time this week: We don’t have the same sort of MVP arguments in other sports that we do in baseball.
Ohtani is a beautiful player and seems to be a beautiful human being. Unfortunately he is saddled with a very poor team. I hope he is helping the Angels fill the stands so they can hire some other great players. How long are Ohtani and Trout going to remain on a losing team. How about a middling team such as the SF Giants (yes I would like to see either one of them play in nearby Oracle Field)
Al Rollins, the goalie for the last place 1953-54 Chicago Black Hawks, won the NHL’s Hart Trophy as MVP in the 1953-54 season. Andy Bathgate won it in 58-59 with the fifth place Rangers.
Not a commentary on the post but enjoyed this blurb from an Economist article on Ohtani.
"Only two players in the history of American baseball have hit 100 home runs and pitched 400 strikeouts. One was Babe Ruth, the American folk hero of the early 20th century. The other, as of September 3rd, is a modest young man from Iwate, a rural prefecture in northern Japan, called Ohtani Shohei."
I'm assuming Joe is counting every day players and not pitchers who have had 10.0 WAR seasons since 1969, because Steve Carlton's (unmentioned) 1972 season seems to be the ultimate test case on just how close you can come to winning the MVP on a truly awful team. (he had 12.2 bWAR that year). He won the Cy Young, of course, but finished 5th in MVP voting. Just so we understand how awful the Phillies were that year, when he pitched the Phillies were 29-12 (70.7% winning %). When he didn't, they were 30-85 (26.1% winning %). I don't know how anyone has ever been more demonstrably valuable to winning for a team than Carlton was in his 41 games pitched that year.
I don't get it. Ohtani has not only contributed nearly as much offensively as Judge, but he's prevented the other team from scoring. Judge could hit 100 dingers and still couldn't claim to have that kind of impact.
If MVP is given for the player who, "contributed most to the story of the season" I submit that the MVP is a player who has not played a single inning this season and will not play a single inning until well into next season...Fernando Tatis, Jr.
Think about it, before this season even started he made the monument(ally stupid) decision not to have shoulder surgery. He then made the monument(ally stupid) decision to ride a motorcycle and crash (at least twice), thus breaking his wrist and keeping him out for an extended period of time. Then, just as he was about to come back to the majors he made the monument(ally stupid) decision to take a steroid, allegedly for ringworm.
Combine these monument(ally stupid) decisions with the Padres hiring Bob Melvin in the off season, ostensibly to bring some gravitas to the dugout and manage the Padres into the playoffs. Combine this with the trade deadline acquisitions of Soto, Hader, Bell, Drury in another effort to go all in. Combine this with throughout the season one of the chief talking points of the Padres and around baseball was "just wait until Tatis gets added to that lineup."
Without ever playing a single game this season, he is clearly the story of the season, whether the Padres win the World Series without him or don't even make the playoffs. That makes him the MVP, under the "story of the season" standard.
The uniqueness - and nerdiness - of baseball fans: This post on baseball mvp discussion has almost as many posts as the last fine NFL 101 profile blogs combined. And only Randy Moss’s off the field antics keep it from being a rout for baseball mvp talk. 😎
One thing that Joe doesn't mention that hurts Ohtani this year is that although this year he is probably going to have a BETTER year than last year, he is not going to be doing his special thing for the first time. Russell Westbrook averaged a triple double for 3 years in a row (and a fourth time a couple years later which I didn't even realize because no one made a big deal out of it), but he only won the MVP the first year he did it because it wasn't special any more, at least in the eyes of the voters.
I guess my question is, are there other players in recent history who won MVP because of a stellar break-out year? My sense is no, and my second sense is that Ohtani will do what he did this year for at least the next few seasons, and it will be his turn for one of them, I’m not sure the exceptional status of what he is doing should except him from MVP, though. It just feels like MVP usually goes to an established player, but I can see awarding it to Ohtani if his WAR passes Judge’s by the end of the year.
* Ivan Rodriguez in 1999, probably the 10th best player in the AL, but a catcher who hit 35 HR and stole 25 bases, hit over .300 and drove in over 100 runs, something no catcher had ever done before.
* Ichiro in 2001, who was maybe the 4th best player in the AL, but was a great story, coming over from Japan and having immediate - and truly incredible - success in the majors for a team that won 119 games. He was considerably better in 2004 (9.2 compared to 7.7 bWAR), but finished 7th in the MVP voting.
* Both Justin Morneau and Ryan Howard in 2006, slugging firstbasemen on competitive teams who were really only the 10th or 20th best players in their leagues.
* Jimmy Rollins in 2007, not even the best player on his own team, much less the whole National League, but a Gold Glove SS who hit 30 HR and stole 40 bases and played every game and led the league in Runs.
Others won it for "breakout years" as well, but were actually the best players as well, including Ohtani last year and Josh Hamilton in 2010.
Connor McDavid played on a few Oilers teams that did not make the playoffs. You just don’t enter the MVP conversation in hockey unless your team makes the playoffs. So many teams make the playoffs, that’s it never really been an issue like it is in baseball. Football is a bit weird as well given that it’s near impossible for a non-QB to win the award and QBs have an outsized influence on the game. Adrian Peterson won the award in 2012, but I don’t think you could drop peak Peterson on to any team and make them into a playoff team at that time. He won the award largely because his team won games.
I also think that each player is on an island in baseball. Having Vladdy Guerrero hit in front of you makes the pitcher pitch to you, in theory, but has anyone actually looked at that? Do pitchers actually change their approach because of the guy in the on deck circle? In hockey, McDavid can make the bums around him better. Lebron can elevate the bums around him. Aaron Rodgers can make mediocre receivers into stars. Mike Trout can really on affect other players on his team on the fringes.
It is a great point that a player can't have the same kind of influence on a baseball team as it can in other sports. You could go back to the start of the season, and put 2001 Barry Bonds and 1985 Dwight Gooden on the Royals, and they still wouldn't be a playoff team.
In Basketball, however, one player makes a difference. You could take any past transcendent season (Prime Jordan or Lebron for instance) and they would probably have made the Rockets a playoff team this year. I am not a big Hockey guy (the kind that doesn't watch until the playoffs) but MVPs there are usually guys that are involved in a lot of scoring, and in a game with that few people on the ice and a limited number of goals, that translates pretty directly to more wins. Football has actually put some emphasis on winning, but that is easy to do now as the MVP has kind of become a "Best QB" award, in a league that is so QB driven now, it is pretty hard to have the best QB be on a losing team. (In this century QBs have won the award 18 of 21 times, including 14 of the last 15).
In addition, in my lifetime, there have always been a much less percentage of teams making the playoffs in the MLB, and that is even still true today with expanded playoffs. Of course, prior to 1969, there weren't any playoffs at all there. Two teams made the World Series.
When I started watching sports, Baseball had 15% of teams make the playoffs. Football was at 31%, Basketball at 53%, and Hockey incredibly had 67% of it's teams make the playoffs.
Hockey has gone down slowly to 50%, the NBA is actually up to two thirds with the play in thing, The NFL is going to 44% this year, still higher than the MLBs 40% beginning this year. Baseball is catching up a bit, but did it slowly. When they went from 15% to 29%, the NFL was at 43%. Baseball dropped to 27% with expansion, and when they went to 33% with the wild card game, the NFL was at 38% (also a drop because of expansion. There are just, even now, less baseball teams that qualify for the playoffs, and in the 70s and 80s and especially before that, the difference was gargantuan.
As a Royals fan, I think that if we had 2001 Barry Bonds, 1985 Dwight Gooden, 2022 Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, they would have a shot at the playoffs.
If anything, those ‘14 & ‘15 teams were the antithesis of this: a collection of very good, not great players. Cain finishing third for MVP in ‘15 being the exception. No other players were in Top Ten for MVP or Cy. Yet somehow, they made it work. As a Royals fan, for me anyway, it seemed more satisfying that way. A collection of very good players at the peak of their careers, and succeeding through….damnit, I’ll say it—Grit.
This might sound controversial, but for me, I would not vote for someone to be the MVP if I didn't feel that player was a future Hall of Fame player. To me, the MVP award should only go to Hall of Fame players who are having a season above their own normal level of excellence (ie their very best seasons). If two or more players have such seasons then you look at whose team won and who's team didn't as the secondary criteria.
If you look at other sports like Hockey for example in the entire history of the NHL, every player who has won the MVP award has gone on to be a member of the Hall of Fame with the exception of the MVP mistake that was Jose Theodore (over Jerome Igina who was a Hall of Fame player). I haven't looked at every basketball MVP but my guess it it's the same there, every MVP award has gone to a hall of fame player. I know football has mistakes like Mark Moseley (in a strike year at least) but I bet for the most part the NFL MVP is also going to Hall of Fame players.
Baseball is the only sport that seems to randomly award average players for a big season that came out of nowhere especially if that team happened to win an unexpected pennant. I suspect a lot of what went into the creation of WAR was desire to see that stop happening.
Circling back to Judge/Ohtani, I ask myself is either or both going to make the Hall. I feel pretty confident Ohtani is ultimately going to make it (assuming health and he has another 4 seasons till age 32 like his last 2 seasons). I am not sure about Judge given his late career start and history of injuries (he's not even half way to 500 hrs and he's 30). So if I was voting, I'd vote for Ohtani because he's a Hall of Fame player having an outstanding season.
But, how could you possibly know? By this standard, you're not giving the MVP to anyone in the first 3-4 years of their career because you don't know if you have a Fred Lynn or a Willie Mays. Or there's folks like Dale Murphy, who sure looked like a Hall of Famer till he didn't. And then there's injuries: we'll never know if Dustin Pedroia would have been able to finish out an HOF career if his knee hadn't gotten wrecked.
I don't find the comparison to the Football HOF convincing. Is it the case that they do a better job of giving MVPs to future Hall of Famers, or is it that the HOF voters aren't all that selective and will induct anyone who won the MVP?
Lets be honest, if your a long time sports fan YOU KNOW when you see a future hall of fame player play when they are young because if they are playing at an MVP level when they are young that's an excellent indicator they are a hall of fame player.
Occasionally injuries derail a career, or drugs etc. But that player was still someone on track to be a hall of fame player.
I'm just saying there is no way I vote for average players having a big career year. So no Ken Camanitti, no Willie McGee, no Willie Hernandez etc.
Interesting standard. I don't know if your theory holds true for the NFL, just because injuries derail careers. I am fairly certain Mark Rypien won the MVP the year he led Washington to the SB victory. Rich Gannon won an MVP too. Those are two off the top of my head.
So I really don't think it holds true at all in the NFL. Yes, a lot of MVPs are future HOFers. But also Matt Ryan, Cam Newton, Shaun Alexander, Steve McNair, Rich Gannon, Boomer Esiason, Joe Theismann (I was wrong about Rypien, he was not MVP his monster year), Mark Mosley, Ken Anderson, Brian Sipe, Bert Jones, Larry Brown, John Brodie (those are just the ones since the merger).
One way to calculate the "good player/lousy team" problem is to count the MVP as the player who had the most Win Points Added in the games *before* his team was eliminated, or before his team clinched a playoff position. So imagine a season in which Shohei had a WPA of 7.0 while Judge had only 5.2, but the Angels were eliminated after game 120 and the Yankees clinched after game 160; Judge would still win, because he'd keep almost all his points, while Shohei would lose about a fourth of his since he'd get no credit for the last 42 games, knocking him down to about 5.25. (Assuming he was playing at about the same level after they were eliminated as before.)
I'd use WPA rather than WAR because it's more closely connected to "value"; you could theoretically rack up a very high WAR while getting a lot of meaningless hits in runaway wins or losses. If you want to be even stricter in calculating value, per se, you would count only the hits (and walks and SF) which contributed to runs, and only in games which the team won. Spectacular performances in losses are ultimately not "valuable" to the team, and neither are leadoff triples where you get stranded. (As Branch Rickey supposedly said to Ralph Kiner when Kiner asked for a raise after leading the league in HR for the hapless Pirates, "we finished last with you, and we can finish last without you.")
Ohtani is a beautiful player and seems to be a beautiful human being. Unfortunately he is saddled with a very poor team. I hope he is helping the Angels fill the stands so they can hire some other great players. How long are Ohtani and Trout going to remain on a losing team. How about a middling team such as the SF Giants (yes I would like to see either one of them play in nearby Oracle Field)
Al Rollins, the goalie for the last place 1953-54 Chicago Black Hawks, won the NHL’s Hart Trophy as MVP in the 1953-54 season. Andy Bathgate won it in 58-59 with the fifth place Rangers.
Not a commentary on the post but enjoyed this blurb from an Economist article on Ohtani.
"Only two players in the history of American baseball have hit 100 home runs and pitched 400 strikeouts. One was Babe Ruth, the American folk hero of the early 20th century. The other, as of September 3rd, is a modest young man from Iwate, a rural prefecture in northern Japan, called Ohtani Shohei."
Ohtani is my MVP.
I'm assuming Joe is counting every day players and not pitchers who have had 10.0 WAR seasons since 1969, because Steve Carlton's (unmentioned) 1972 season seems to be the ultimate test case on just how close you can come to winning the MVP on a truly awful team. (he had 12.2 bWAR that year). He won the Cy Young, of course, but finished 5th in MVP voting. Just so we understand how awful the Phillies were that year, when he pitched the Phillies were 29-12 (70.7% winning %). When he didn't, they were 30-85 (26.1% winning %). I don't know how anyone has ever been more demonstrably valuable to winning for a team than Carlton was in his 41 games pitched that year.
Put another way, in 1972, the Phillies were the 1998 Yankees with Carlton on the mound and the 2003 Tigers when he wasn't.
I don't get it. Ohtani has not only contributed nearly as much offensively as Judge, but he's prevented the other team from scoring. Judge could hit 100 dingers and still couldn't claim to have that kind of impact.
I also submit that the record for most intentional walks without giving up an intentional walk rests with Barry Lamar Bonds.
If MVP is given for the player who, "contributed most to the story of the season" I submit that the MVP is a player who has not played a single inning this season and will not play a single inning until well into next season...Fernando Tatis, Jr.
Think about it, before this season even started he made the monument(ally stupid) decision not to have shoulder surgery. He then made the monument(ally stupid) decision to ride a motorcycle and crash (at least twice), thus breaking his wrist and keeping him out for an extended period of time. Then, just as he was about to come back to the majors he made the monument(ally stupid) decision to take a steroid, allegedly for ringworm.
Combine these monument(ally stupid) decisions with the Padres hiring Bob Melvin in the off season, ostensibly to bring some gravitas to the dugout and manage the Padres into the playoffs. Combine this with the trade deadline acquisitions of Soto, Hader, Bell, Drury in another effort to go all in. Combine this with throughout the season one of the chief talking points of the Padres and around baseball was "just wait until Tatis gets added to that lineup."
Without ever playing a single game this season, he is clearly the story of the season, whether the Padres win the World Series without him or don't even make the playoffs. That makes him the MVP, under the "story of the season" standard.
The uniqueness - and nerdiness - of baseball fans: This post on baseball mvp discussion has almost as many posts as the last fine NFL 101 profile blogs combined. And only Randy Moss’s off the field antics keep it from being a rout for baseball mvp talk. 😎
One thing that Joe doesn't mention that hurts Ohtani this year is that although this year he is probably going to have a BETTER year than last year, he is not going to be doing his special thing for the first time. Russell Westbrook averaged a triple double for 3 years in a row (and a fourth time a couple years later which I didn't even realize because no one made a big deal out of it), but he only won the MVP the first year he did it because it wasn't special any more, at least in the eyes of the voters.
I guess my question is, are there other players in recent history who won MVP because of a stellar break-out year? My sense is no, and my second sense is that Ohtani will do what he did this year for at least the next few seasons, and it will be his turn for one of them, I’m not sure the exceptional status of what he is doing should except him from MVP, though. It just feels like MVP usually goes to an established player, but I can see awarding it to Ohtani if his WAR passes Judge’s by the end of the year.
Lots of examples, actually.
* Ivan Rodriguez in 1999, probably the 10th best player in the AL, but a catcher who hit 35 HR and stole 25 bases, hit over .300 and drove in over 100 runs, something no catcher had ever done before.
* Ichiro in 2001, who was maybe the 4th best player in the AL, but was a great story, coming over from Japan and having immediate - and truly incredible - success in the majors for a team that won 119 games. He was considerably better in 2004 (9.2 compared to 7.7 bWAR), but finished 7th in the MVP voting.
* Both Justin Morneau and Ryan Howard in 2006, slugging firstbasemen on competitive teams who were really only the 10th or 20th best players in their leagues.
* Jimmy Rollins in 2007, not even the best player on his own team, much less the whole National League, but a Gold Glove SS who hit 30 HR and stole 40 bases and played every game and led the league in Runs.
Others won it for "breakout years" as well, but were actually the best players as well, including Ohtani last year and Josh Hamilton in 2010.
Um ... Ohtani did get the AL MVP award in 2021
Connor McDavid played on a few Oilers teams that did not make the playoffs. You just don’t enter the MVP conversation in hockey unless your team makes the playoffs. So many teams make the playoffs, that’s it never really been an issue like it is in baseball. Football is a bit weird as well given that it’s near impossible for a non-QB to win the award and QBs have an outsized influence on the game. Adrian Peterson won the award in 2012, but I don’t think you could drop peak Peterson on to any team and make them into a playoff team at that time. He won the award largely because his team won games.
I also think that each player is on an island in baseball. Having Vladdy Guerrero hit in front of you makes the pitcher pitch to you, in theory, but has anyone actually looked at that? Do pitchers actually change their approach because of the guy in the on deck circle? In hockey, McDavid can make the bums around him better. Lebron can elevate the bums around him. Aaron Rodgers can make mediocre receivers into stars. Mike Trout can really on affect other players on his team on the fringes.
It is a great point that a player can't have the same kind of influence on a baseball team as it can in other sports. You could go back to the start of the season, and put 2001 Barry Bonds and 1985 Dwight Gooden on the Royals, and they still wouldn't be a playoff team.
In Basketball, however, one player makes a difference. You could take any past transcendent season (Prime Jordan or Lebron for instance) and they would probably have made the Rockets a playoff team this year. I am not a big Hockey guy (the kind that doesn't watch until the playoffs) but MVPs there are usually guys that are involved in a lot of scoring, and in a game with that few people on the ice and a limited number of goals, that translates pretty directly to more wins. Football has actually put some emphasis on winning, but that is easy to do now as the MVP has kind of become a "Best QB" award, in a league that is so QB driven now, it is pretty hard to have the best QB be on a losing team. (In this century QBs have won the award 18 of 21 times, including 14 of the last 15).
In addition, in my lifetime, there have always been a much less percentage of teams making the playoffs in the MLB, and that is even still true today with expanded playoffs. Of course, prior to 1969, there weren't any playoffs at all there. Two teams made the World Series.
When I started watching sports, Baseball had 15% of teams make the playoffs. Football was at 31%, Basketball at 53%, and Hockey incredibly had 67% of it's teams make the playoffs.
Hockey has gone down slowly to 50%, the NBA is actually up to two thirds with the play in thing, The NFL is going to 44% this year, still higher than the MLBs 40% beginning this year. Baseball is catching up a bit, but did it slowly. When they went from 15% to 29%, the NFL was at 43%. Baseball dropped to 27% with expansion, and when they went to 33% with the wild card game, the NFL was at 38% (also a drop because of expansion. There are just, even now, less baseball teams that qualify for the playoffs, and in the 70s and 80s and especially before that, the difference was gargantuan.
As a Royals fan, I think that if we had 2001 Barry Bonds, 1985 Dwight Gooden, 2022 Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, they would have a shot at the playoffs.
If anything, those ‘14 & ‘15 teams were the antithesis of this: a collection of very good, not great players. Cain finishing third for MVP in ‘15 being the exception. No other players were in Top Ten for MVP or Cy. Yet somehow, they made it work. As a Royals fan, for me anyway, it seemed more satisfying that way. A collection of very good players at the peak of their careers, and succeeding through….damnit, I’ll say it—Grit.
This might sound controversial, but for me, I would not vote for someone to be the MVP if I didn't feel that player was a future Hall of Fame player. To me, the MVP award should only go to Hall of Fame players who are having a season above their own normal level of excellence (ie their very best seasons). If two or more players have such seasons then you look at whose team won and who's team didn't as the secondary criteria.
If you look at other sports like Hockey for example in the entire history of the NHL, every player who has won the MVP award has gone on to be a member of the Hall of Fame with the exception of the MVP mistake that was Jose Theodore (over Jerome Igina who was a Hall of Fame player). I haven't looked at every basketball MVP but my guess it it's the same there, every MVP award has gone to a hall of fame player. I know football has mistakes like Mark Moseley (in a strike year at least) but I bet for the most part the NFL MVP is also going to Hall of Fame players.
Baseball is the only sport that seems to randomly award average players for a big season that came out of nowhere especially if that team happened to win an unexpected pennant. I suspect a lot of what went into the creation of WAR was desire to see that stop happening.
Circling back to Judge/Ohtani, I ask myself is either or both going to make the Hall. I feel pretty confident Ohtani is ultimately going to make it (assuming health and he has another 4 seasons till age 32 like his last 2 seasons). I am not sure about Judge given his late career start and history of injuries (he's not even half way to 500 hrs and he's 30). So if I was voting, I'd vote for Ohtani because he's a Hall of Fame player having an outstanding season.
But, how could you possibly know? By this standard, you're not giving the MVP to anyone in the first 3-4 years of their career because you don't know if you have a Fred Lynn or a Willie Mays. Or there's folks like Dale Murphy, who sure looked like a Hall of Famer till he didn't. And then there's injuries: we'll never know if Dustin Pedroia would have been able to finish out an HOF career if his knee hadn't gotten wrecked.
I don't find the comparison to the Football HOF convincing. Is it the case that they do a better job of giving MVPs to future Hall of Famers, or is it that the HOF voters aren't all that selective and will induct anyone who won the MVP?
Lets be honest, if your a long time sports fan YOU KNOW when you see a future hall of fame player play when they are young because if they are playing at an MVP level when they are young that's an excellent indicator they are a hall of fame player.
Occasionally injuries derail a career, or drugs etc. But that player was still someone on track to be a hall of fame player.
I'm just saying there is no way I vote for average players having a big career year. So no Ken Camanitti, no Willie McGee, no Willie Hernandez etc.
Interesting standard. I don't know if your theory holds true for the NFL, just because injuries derail careers. I am fairly certain Mark Rypien won the MVP the year he led Washington to the SB victory. Rich Gannon won an MVP too. Those are two off the top of my head.
So I really don't think it holds true at all in the NFL. Yes, a lot of MVPs are future HOFers. But also Matt Ryan, Cam Newton, Shaun Alexander, Steve McNair, Rich Gannon, Boomer Esiason, Joe Theismann (I was wrong about Rypien, he was not MVP his monster year), Mark Mosley, Ken Anderson, Brian Sipe, Bert Jones, Larry Brown, John Brodie (those are just the ones since the merger).
Yeah a lot of guy on that list who I am sure the voters would like to have back.
In the last 20 years they've stopped giving to anyone who is not a clear hall of fame player. In the 70s-00's they made some mistakes as you've noted.
Good article but tortured argument for Judge when Ohtani is clearly MVP. Impossible to vote otherwise.
One way to calculate the "good player/lousy team" problem is to count the MVP as the player who had the most Win Points Added in the games *before* his team was eliminated, or before his team clinched a playoff position. So imagine a season in which Shohei had a WPA of 7.0 while Judge had only 5.2, but the Angels were eliminated after game 120 and the Yankees clinched after game 160; Judge would still win, because he'd keep almost all his points, while Shohei would lose about a fourth of his since he'd get no credit for the last 42 games, knocking him down to about 5.25. (Assuming he was playing at about the same level after they were eliminated as before.)
I'd use WPA rather than WAR because it's more closely connected to "value"; you could theoretically rack up a very high WAR while getting a lot of meaningless hits in runaway wins or losses. If you want to be even stricter in calculating value, per se, you would count only the hits (and walks and SF) which contributed to runs, and only in games which the team won. Spectacular performances in losses are ultimately not "valuable" to the team, and neither are leadoff triples where you get stranded. (As Branch Rickey supposedly said to Ralph Kiner when Kiner asked for a raise after leading the league in HR for the hapless Pirates, "we finished last with you, and we can finish last without you.")