Grading the work of BBWAA MLB award voters

Grade: A

In the Judge-Ohtani debate, we visit the relative merits of pitching and hitting, but this time with the twist that Ohtani is actually a two-way player.

Let’s begin with Judge, the simpler case since all he does is hit.

Judge produced a 10.6 WAR. As previously noted, WAR is an approximation of relative contribution, so it isn’t necessarily determinative. In this case, however, it’s compelling. Considering only the offensive portion of the game, the next best total behind Judge was Andres Gimenez in Cleveland, and he was back at 7.4. Ohtani? He stopped at just 3.4 WAR for his offense.

Of course, Ohtani did more than slug, he also made other people unslug. On the mound, Ohtani added 6.2 WAR to his MLB season. But that only brought him to 9.6 WAR, still a full point short of Judge.

If we turn to Win Probability Added, Ohtani is credited with 5.6, counting both his offense and mound work. But Judge hits 8.1. There’s no real need to look deeper than those two categories; in a two-way contest of value Judge plainly wins.

Yordan Alvarez had a wonderful year, and although voters don’t consider this it was capped with a World Series win. But in terms of value added, he is a clear and deserving third. He measured 6.8 WAR and 5.1 WPA, ranking third and second respectively in the two categories. As a combo DH-left fielder, he accrues no supplementary points for defensive work.