Let’s talk most valuable player awards.
We are in crunch time of a remarkable Major League Baseball season. Teams are having historic seasons, and the MVP battle between Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani is a debate that baseball fans are vehement about. Does it matter to you? Do you really care who is MVP or how it is determined? If you do … let’s talk MVPs.
There have been great individual stories this year. Justin Verlander has come off surgery to dominate the majors in pitching with 17 wins and a 1.78 ERA. Albert Pujols is nearing 700 career homers. Paul Goldschmidt is chasing the NL Triple Crown, and in the battle for the AL MVP Award, Ohtani is a once-in-a-lifetime, perhaps once-in-sports history talent, and Judge is a generational Superman.
Ohtani is an historic two-way player with never-before-seen dual stats of 13 wins, more than 200 strikeouts (12 Ks per nine innings) and a pitching WAR (the popular metric of Wins Above Replacement) of 5.3 on the mound, and as a hitter, he has 34 homers, is approaching 100 RBIs, has an OPS (on-base-plus-slugging percentage) of .892 and a WAR of 3.6 for a combined WAR of 8.9.
Aaron Judge is must-see TV. He has reached the 60-home run mark – only the sixth player in history to do so) and is on course to be the all-time AL single-season home run king. He is in Triple Crown territory with 60 home runs and 130 RBIs and is approaching a .320 batting average while slugging over .700, with an OPS of 1.126. Judge's WAR is 9.9.
So who is the MVP? Judge, a premier slugger and outfielder who is having a season of a lifetime, or Ohtani, who is dominant on BOTH sides of the mound? The key words are “Most Valuable.” The Angels are in fourth place WITH Ohtani. Without him, they’d still be in fourth place. The Yankees are hanging onto first place WITH Judge. Without him, they might be in fourth place. The Yanks were 64-28 at the all-star break, and their once-15½-game lead shrunk to 4½ at one point. For the past third of the season, Judge has been carrying the Yankees on his back, with a .386 average, .883 slugging, .518 on base average, 1.401 OPS, 62 RBIs and 29 homers.
The value, to me, is in helping his team win, which Judge clearly does, albeit with a more talented set of teammates around him, and which, Ohtani, even with Mike Trout alongside, does not. I often thought there should be multiple awards. For me, focusing on another sport, the 1980s and 1990s showed me that in the NBA, Michael Jordan was the best player on the court and could do it all, but Larry Bird did whatever he had to do to win a game – whether that was scoring, defense or rebounding -- and Magic Johnson made his team win by making every player on the team better through Magic’s play – running the “Showtime” offense, dishing the ball, scoring or playing D. They needed Best Player, Player of the Year and MVP awards to reward all three properly.
For me, simply, Shohei Ohtani is “Best Player in the Game,” and Aaron Judge is “Most Valuable Player.”
What do you think? Do you care and is it important to you? If it is … who is your MVP? Or maybe you vote for Houston's Yordan Alvarez or Verlander. Let me know how you feel at mike.blake@mountvernonnews.com.
