Cody Bellinger or Christian Yelich: Who ya got for NL MVP?
Cody Bellinger and Christian Yelich have made a strong case for NL MVP all season long. Whoever mounts the strongest finish will probably win
The NL MVP race is shaping up as a two-way battle between the defending champion, Christian Yelich, and Dodger sparkplug and Cody Bellinger.
The issue isn’t quite down to just those two, though. If Bellinger and Yelich both slow down through the season’s final six weeks, any of three or four second-level contenders could – with a strong finish – project themselves into award contention.
At this stage of the season in 2018, Yelich projected as the likely winner, a status he ensured with a superb September that led Milwaukee to the NL Central division title. This year Yelich is batting .333 – seven percentage points better than his league-leading .326. He also leads the NL in both on-base percentage (.425) and slugging average (.699), all that translates to a 182 OPS+.
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But that hasn’t been good enough to shake Bellinger. A .316 hitter, he has a 179 OPS+ and a league-leading 39 home runs. Bellinger’s case may also be helped by the fact that his Dodgers are the consensus pick as the National League’s best team; Yelich’s Brewers are hanging in the NL Central and wild card race.
There is a simple, straightforward and objective way to remove the sensory aspects from a measure of any player’s value relative to all other MVP candidates, resulting in an utterly objective finding. That method involves looking at the percentage and magnitude in each candidate’s “victories” in individual player-pitcher matchups, those micro-showdowns that are the heart and soul of baseball.
This formula has the salubrious side-benefit of allowing a fair comparison of the relative performances of both batters and pitchers, a challenge that often eludes MVP voters.
The formula for calculating this percentage is not at all complicated: divide total bases by plate appearances (assigning one base for walks and hit batters), and calculate the percentage of batter (or pitcher) “wins” in such matchups. When rating pitchers – who obviously are in the business of preventing the reaching of a base, not achieving same — reverse the polarity of the result by subtracting it from 1.000.
Pitchers often get short shrift from MVP voters on the theory that “they have their own award.” The ongoing tendency of managers to reduce pitcher workloads is having the side effect of weakening their relevance, and hence their award candidacies. This year, however, three National League pitchers are at least worth looking at, although only Hyun-Jin Ryu among them could actually deserve to contend.
Measured by the formula outlined above, Ryu has “won” 66.31 percent of his batter-pitcher matchups; that ranks behind just Yelich and Bellinger. When he won last year MVP, Yelich’s pitcher-hitter “win” percentage was 65.4.
Who could catch Yelich or Bellinger? Aside from Ryu, the leading candidates are Pittsburgh’s Josh Bell, New York’s Pete Alonso, and Washington’s Anthony Rendon, each with “win” percentages around 64 percent.
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Here’s the data on the 10 strongest NL MVP candidates through mid-August.
Player, team Bases PAs Pct
Christian Yelich, Mil 357 471 75.80
Cody Bellinger, LA 350 496 70.56
Hyun-Jin Ryu, LA 190 428 66.31
Mike Soroka, Atl 181 384 65.78
Pete Alonso, NYM 323 501 64.47
Josh Bell, Pit 319 497 64.19
Anthony Rendon, Was 294 459 64.05
Max Scherzer, Was 203 403 62.62
Freddie Freeman, Atl 336 537 62.57
Fernando Tatis Jr., SD 232 372 62.37