MLB MVP Award: BBWAA voting converges with WAR
The MLB MVP choices by the BBWAA voters have aligned more closely with the leaders in Fangraphs WAR over the last 20 years.
Congratulations to Jose Altuve and Giancarlo Stanton for winning the MVPs of their respective leagues. They were both very deserving MLB MVPs who put up great numbers. They also happen to be the shortest and tallest MVPs ever, which is one of the very cool things about baseball (Altuve is tied with Phil Rizzuto and Bobby Shantz for shortest MVP). In baseball, you can have small guys like Altuve and Dustin Pedroia compete equally with big guys like Stanton and Aaron Judge, not to mention the rare Bartolo Colon types.
The BBWAA first awarded MVP trophies to the best player from each league in 1931. There were MVP-like awards prior to that, but they were inconsistently awarded. The 1931 AL MVP was Lefty Grove, and the NL MVP was Frankie Frisch. Grove and Frisch were fine players, but not necessarily deserving MVPs. According to Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement (fWAR), there were three players in the AL more valuable than Grove and 16 players in the NL more valuable than Frisch. The fWAR MVPs would have been Babe Ruth and Bill Terry.
Of course, fWAR isn’t gospel. There are other metrics like Baseball-Reference WAR and Baseball Prospectus WARP. They all measure the value of a player in one number by incorporating all the things that player does on a baseball diamond. They value a player based on wins above a theoretical replacement player.
When it comes to MVP voting, the baseball writers can use whatever method they choose to determine their picks. Many years ago, their primary assessment tool was their eyeballs and traditional statistics. Most of the time the MVP was on a winning team and very often on a playoff team. Many writers still give extra credit to players on winning teams and playoff teams, but it’s not an absolute. Stanton won the NL MVP this year despite playing on a losing team. Mike Trout did the same last season.
When the MVP Award came into existence, it was not unusual for voters to choose players who were not the most valuable according to fWAR. For one thing, there was no fWAR. For many decades, the narrative of the season greatly influenced the MVP voting. It was more based on subjective feelings than objective measurements. This is still the case for some voters, but objective measurements are being used more and more.
This isn’t to say the MVP should be based on one number like WAR and it doesn’t have to go to the league leader in WAR, but it should go to someone who is at least in the ballpark. Based on my research, BBWAA voters are regularly voting for players who are among the league leaders in Fangraphs WAR (it should be noted that fWAR was chosen because Fangraphs’ Combined WAR Leaderboard is easily accessible).