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Forum nameOkay Sports
Topic subjectI tend to agree with history that the Triple Crown isn't the auto-MVP
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=8&topic_id=2746738&mesg_id=2746819
2746819, I tend to agree with history that the Triple Crown isn't the auto-MVP
Posted by Nodima, Sun Sep-19-21 10:48 PM
The New York Times of all places laid out the most cogent argument for why Vlad shouldn't get the MVP even if he comfortably claims the Triple Crown, and they didn't even have to go full sabremetrics and point to Miguel Cabrera winning over Mike Trout when he got the Triple Crown to make their case. They just pointed to the several other times its happened.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/sports/baseball/vladimir-guerrero-triple-crown.html


"Despite the notion in 2012 that a triple crown could not be ignored in the M.V.P. voting, the historical precedent says the opposite.

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In 1942, Williams led the A.L. with a .356 average, 36 home runs and 137 R.B.I. He scored 141 runs and had a 1.147 on-base plus slugging percentage. In more modern terms, he had a major league-leading 10.5 WAR. Yet for the voters that year, second baseman Joe Gordon’s solid run for the first-place Yankees — though he trailed Williams in nearly every offensive category — was more important, and Gordon won the M.V.P. fairly easily.

In 1947, lightning struck twice. Williams led the A.L. with a .343 average, 32 homers and 114 R.B.I. He scored 125 runs, had an O.P.S. of 1.133 and produced 9.6 WAR. That time it was Joe DiMaggio of the, you guessed it, first-place Yankees, who beat out Williams despite trailing him in everything.

The M.V.P.-less fate that befell Williams twice, and could happen for Guerrero this year, has other precedent as well. Lou Gehrig won the A.L. triple crown in 1934 and finished fifth in M.V.P. voting — he didn’t even place first among his teammates. In 1933, Chuck Klein of the Philadelphia Phillies won the N.L. triple crown but lost the M.V.P. to Carl Hubbell of the Giants. In 1912, Heinie Zimmerman of the Chicago Cubs captured the N.L. triple crown and finished tied for sixth in the M.V.P. voting, well behind the winner, Larry Doyle of the Giants.

In some of the other triple crown years, no M.V.P. was awarded. And in the case of the 10 triple crowns that Baseball Reference has recognized from the Negro leagues, no M.V.P. information is given."



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And all that aside, all you have to do is look at all Ohtani's accomplished and recognize even he might not do this again. Until this recent slump at the plate he had the coolest swing at the plate and then he'd turn right back around and throw one of the coolest pitches I've ever seen in my life back at it - that splitter is totally mind-blowing, and it's wild that it's coming out of the hand of a dude who will also hit 1-4 for power and led the league in homers for most of the year. He had people who think baseball is a joke sport in modern times tuning in to baseball games. He's more than the most valuable Angels player (which, if you want to go that route, at various times you could've argued Robbie Ray or Bo Bichette were more valuable to the Jays) while the Angels have been crossing their fingers that Jared Walsh might become a star.

Unless Ohtani hits .100 for the rest of the month and drops a third hellacious stinker on the mound, the entire conversation just feels academic at best.


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