MLB MVP Award: BBWAA voting converges with WAR
MVPs and Fangraphs WAR
This year is a good example of the progress by voters. American League MVP Jose Altuve ranked 2nd in fWAR to Aaron Judge (8.2 to 7.5). National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton finished in a tie with Anthony Rendon at the top of the fWAR standings (Rendon was incrementally ahead but both are listed at 6.9 fWAR). The voting was very much in line with the fWAR rankings.
This year’s BBWAA picks are typical of the voting trends over the last five years. In the AL, all of the last five MVPs have finished in the top three in fWAR. In the National League, the last ten MVPs have finished in the top three in fWAR and nine of them were the league leader in the metric. The lone exception in the last 10 years is Ryan Braun in 2011, who was third in fWAR behind Matt Kemp and Roy Halladay.
It wasn’t always like this. Looking back to 1931, here’s the breakdown of how often the BBWAA MVP was the league leader in fWAR.
29%–1931 to 1989
35%–1990 to 1999
45%–2000 to 2009
63%–2010 to 2017
For nearly sixty years, the MVP was the league leader in fWAR just under 30 percent of the time. This started to increase slightly in the 1990s and again in the 2000s before really jumping in the last eight years (particularly in the NL).
There’s also been an increase in how often the MVP was among the top three in fWAR. This has been particularly true over the last eight years, when 75 percent of the AL MVPs and 100 percent of the NL MVPs were in the top three in fWAR.
48%–1931 to 1989
45%–1990 to 1999
50%–2000 to 2009
88%–2010 to 2017
This increase in how often the MVP finishes at or near the top of the fWAR rankings has also meant really bad choices are increasingly rare. As mentioned above, the NL MVPs have been very good choices over the last 10 years. Before this, the back-to-back picks of Ryan Howard in 2006 and Jimmy Rollins in 2007 were two of the worst picks in the last 20 years.