I’m supposed to write a weekly notes piece here at BSL. That is supposed to feature different notes on different aspects of whatever is going on in Major League Baseball at the time. The thing about that though is there really is only one thing going on in Major League Baseball right now. The playoff races are over, the awards are pretty much settled (with one notable exception we’ll get to), there isn’t any big news to cover.
Except this: Aaron Judge. And the good thing for baseball fans is there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to Aaron Judge. Is he the AL MVP? Are the Yankees actually any good without him? What about the home run record? Will his 62nd homer be the all time record?
So, let’s take it one at a time.
Judge is hitting .316/.422/.703. That’s the highest batting average in the American League, the highest on-base percentage in baseball, and the highest slugging percentage in baseball by almost 100 points (85 points if you must know). It goes without saying he’s got the highest OPS and wRC+ in baseball as well. As for counting stats, his 60 homers leads second place Kyle Schwarber by 20, which is half of Schwarber’s 40. He’s five RBIs ahead of Pete Alonso for the MLB lead and 11 up on Jose Ramirez for the AL lead.
FanGraphs hasn’t yet updated their WAR totals to reflect Judge’s three walks last night, but it’s safe to say Judge’s 10.7 fWAR will go up slightly. That number, by the way, is almost four wins ahead of second place Paul Goldschmidt, and if you confine yourself to the American League, Judge’s lead widens to 4.4 wins, 0.1 wins more than 13th place Eugenio Suarez of Seattle.
Except that last part isn’t quite right because Shohei Ohtani has 3.8 fWAR as a hitter and five as a pitcher, which gives him a total of 8.8. That’s still about two wins shy of Judge, but at least now we’re getting in range of a decent argument.
And we do have one, too. Some are arguing that Ohtani’s mastery of both hitting and pitching should net him his second consecutive MVP award. Others argue that Judge’s transcendent season should be enough to vault him over Ohtani. And, if you switch WARs from FanGraphs to Baseball Reference, things get a bit tighter. B-Ref gives Judge 9.9 on the season (again, excluding Thursday’s game). Ohtani gets 5.3 from the mound and 3.6 at the plate for a total of 8.9. Again, the edge is Judge’s but now we’re really within the margin for error, or at least darn close to it.
A couple points about where we are right now. Some say Ohtani shouldn’t win the award because he won it last year. I try to stay away from name calling, but that’s not a good argument. What happened last season and the awards handed out for it should have no bearing on this season’s awards. I know sometimes it does, but it really really shouldn’t. The best player or most valuable should win the MVP award each season and whether they won it last season or not is immaterial to that discussion.
Another argument I’ve heard is that Ohtani shouldn’t win the award because his team is in last place and Judge’s is in first place. That, also, is silly and besides the point. A player can accumulate value independent of his teammates. It’s unfair to punish a player for being on a rotten team, something which he can have no control over beyond his own abilities to play well on the field. If the Yankees were terrible (if only wishing made it so) Judge should still be in contention for the MVP award because his performance this season has been good enough to warrant it. The same is true of Ohtani.
Finally, I’ve heard some make the argument that Judge should win the award because he’s poised to break the all time record for most home runs in a season. This is an intentional snubbing of the so-called Steroid Era and the accomplishments of Barry Bonds, who hit 73 homers in 2001, as well as Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, both of whom eclipsed Roger Maris’ 61 homers in 1961, who eclipsed Babe Ruth’s 60 homers in 1927.
Nothing like folding the nature of the MVP award itself in with a rehashing of the steroid argument to really keep you off your dinner.
Calling Maris the game’s all time home run hitter is both factually inaccurate and ignores so many other facts that have gone into baseball’s fraught history. I Baseball’s color barrier, it’s long history with drugs of all sorts, not just steroids, the changing nature of the game, the size of the season itself, and a whole bunch of other factors have gone into placing the record where it currently stands, and pointing to one of these factors without acknowledging the rest of them is an exceeding bit of get-off-my-lawnishness.
But whether or not Judge breaks the all time single season home run record when/if he hits his 62nd homer hardly matters. It’s a great milestone (even without the record part), but it doesn’t entitle him to the MVP award. The last season anyone has ever hit over .400 was 1941 when Ted Williams hit .406. Williams led the league in batting average that season (obviously) as well as on-base percentage, slugging percentage, RBIs, runs, walks, and oh yeah, home runs as well. He finished second in the MVP award voting that season to Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio was the inferior player, but had a season for the ages just the same, highlighted by his famous 56 game hitting streak, another mark along with William’s batting average that hasn’t been equaled since.
MVP voters couldn’t pull up FanGraphs back in 1941 to look at WAR or wRC+, but if they could have, they’d have seen that Williams led DiMaggio in both by significant if not overwhelming margins.
The MVP vote should be close this season. Both Judge and Ohtani have a right to the award as both are doing things that it can be argued haven’t been done in decades. I don’t have a vote so I’ll spare you my opinion, but anyone who attempts to back up their argument by mentioning Ohtani’s team (irrelevant) or Judge’s record (inaccurate) is simply attempting to mislead. Both players are worthy winners on the merits, and neither needs the help from such lazy arguments.
Orioles Analyst
Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.