MLB players to win Triple Crown without being named MVP

Toronto Blue Jays’ first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is now on a full-out chase to become only the second Triple Crown winner in more than a half century. With his 44th home run Sunday, tying Shohei Ohtani for leadership in that department, he needs only to catch White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu in RBIs.

Abreu has 107; Guerrero is fourth in that category with 102.

Since Carl Yastrzemski won the Triple Crown for Boston in 1967, only one player has led in all three categories. Miguel Cabrera won the Triple Crown in 2012, batting .330 with 44 home runs and 139 RBIs.

The way he’s hitting, Guerrero has a legitimate chance to catch Abreu and win the Triple Crown. But given the performance, both pitching and batting, of Ohtani, it is less certain that even a Triple Crown would clinch MVP votes for Guerrero.

Yet as odd as it sounds, it’s not especially unusual for Triple Crown winners to get short-shrift by MVP voters. In fact, since the creation of the first MVP Award, there have been a dozen Triple Crown winners, five of whom failed to win the MVP.

For the most part, those slights appear to have been driven by the fact that the Triple Crown winners played for teams that under-performed expectations. In all five cases, the Triple Crown winner lost out to a player from a league champion.

If nothing else, that would make the 2021 vote unique since Ohtani is not going to be pitching or hitting for a pennant winner.

Since creation of the MVP Award, the seven players who won both a Triple Crown and an MVP were Rogers Hornsby in 1925, Jimmie Foxx in 1933, Joe Medwick in 1937, Mickey Mantle in 1956, Frank Robinson in 1966, Yastrzemski in 1967 and Cabrera in 2012.

But their stories aren’t the interesting ones. More intriguing are the Triple Crown winners who got bypassed by MVP voters. Here are their stories.

Heinie Zimmerman, 1912

The Chalmers Award, the precursor to the Most Valuable Player, was created in 1911. One year later, Chicago Cubs infielder Heinie Zimmerman led National League batters in home runs (14), RBIs (104), and batting average (.372).

Yet Zimmerman not only didn’t win the Chalmers MVP, he didn’t even come especially close. The winner was New York Giants’ second baseman Laughing Larry Doyle, who finished sixth in home runs (10), fifth in RBIs (91) and fourth in average (.330).

Doyle not only beat Zimmerman, he crushed him.  When the Chalmers voters considered the question that winter, Doyle received 48 voting points, three times as many as Zimmerman’s 16. The best the Triple Crown winner could do was tie Boston’s Bill Sweeney for sixth, behind Doyle, Honus Wagner, Chief Meyers, Joe Tinker, and Bob Bescher.

How did Doyle stand out so decisively from the season’s Triple Crown winner? Two reasons probably explain it. The first is personality: Laughing Larry Doyle was popular with players, fans, and writers alike, while Zimmerman was widely perceived as a churl…and possibly a dishonest one.

The second reason had to do with team performance. Doyle’s Giants won the National League pennant, while Zimmerman’s Cubs finished a distant third. The top three players in the NL MVP voting that season played for teams that finished first or second.

Lou Gehrig, 1934

The 1934 American League MVP voting is the clearest historical case of on-field statistical dominance clashing with such intangibles as leadership. In the end, voters went with leadership.

Looking purely at statistics, Gehrig was a clear winner.  He hit 49 home runs, drove in 166 runs, and batted .363, sweeping those categories. He also led in on base average (.465), slugging average (.706), and total bases (409).

Even in a hitting-mad season, those were phenomenal numbers.

Gehrig’s problem was that his Yankees finished seven games behind the champion Detroit Tigers. The Tigers, who hadn’t won a pennant since 1909, were managed by their catcher, Mickey Cochrane, who had come over the previous winter from Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics.

As the principal pre-season pickup, Cochrane was widely viewed as the difference that lifted the Tigers ahead of the Yankees. The Tigers catcher-manager certainly had a good season; he hit .320 with 75 RBIs, although he produced just two home runs.

But when the MVP voters cast their ballots, they had little problem looking past Gehrig’s tangibles in favor of Cochrane’s leadership. He won the award with 67 voting points, two more than his teammate, second baseman Charlie Gehringer.

Yankee pitcher Lefty Gomez finished third, Tiger ace Schoolboy Rowe was fourth, and Gehrig landed fifth with 54 vote points. Gehrig was named on 68 percent of ballots, but Cochrane was supported on 84 percent of those same ballots.

Ted Williams 1942

In the early decades of the MVP award, voters displayed a clear preference for contributions to team success ahead of individual accomplishment. The 1942 vote was yet another example of this belief.

Coming off his .406  season of 1941, Williams was a start-to-finish sensation in the first year of the game’s World War II era. He repeated as batting champion – this time at .356 – won his second straight home run title (with 36) and led in RBIs with 137.

But Williams’ Red Sox finished in second place, nine games behind the defending World Series champion Yankees.

Although the voting was split, MVP voters were less impressed with Williams’ contributions to a runner-up season than they were by Joe Gordon’s contributions to a pennant winner.

Gordon certainly had a solid season. The Yankee second baseman batted .322 with 18 home runs and he drove in 103 runs. But he trailed Williams by 34 points in average, hit half as many home runs, and drove in 34 fewer runs.

As a second baseman, he did, of course, play a more vital defensive position than Williams, a left fielder.

The first place voting was close, Gordon being named first on half of the 24 ballots cast, and Williams winning nine of them. But on total points, the decision went to Gordon by a fairly decisive 270-249. Williams received news of his loss while taking pilot training in preparation for joining the military.

Ted Williams, 1947

The 1947 MVP voting is famous – notorious may be a better word – for the voters’ injustice in naming Joe DiMaggio ahead of Williams. The margin was a single point, DiMaggio winning 202-201. The 24 voters gave DiMaggio eight first place votes, seven going to Joe Page, three each to Williams and St. Louis infielder George McQuinn, two to Philadelphia infielder Eddie Joost and one to Indians shortstop Lou Boudreau.

Statistically, Williams was again indisputably the league’s best player. He hit 32 home runs, DiMaggio hit 20. He drove in 114 runs, DiMaggio drove in 97. He batted .343, DiMaggio finished at .315. His OPS was 220 points higher than DiMaggio’s.

The ‘new’ statistical data really underscores Williams’ superiority in 1947 vis a vis DiMaggio. He had a 205 OPS+, a 9.6 WAR, and a 4.7 Win Probability Added. DiMaggio’s comparables were 154, 4.7 and 2.8.

Although the voters left no written explanation, it’s reasonable to deduce that the same two reasons why past Triple Crown champions were overlooked also hurt Williams. First and foremost, the Red Sox didn’t win. Worse, Williams’ team was the defending champion, entered play as the favorite, and he was the star…ergo he must have been responsible for the failure to win.

Second, of course, was Williams’ well-established reputation for feuding with reporters, several of whom were MVP voters. DiMaggio, by contrast, was a press favorite.