About seven or eight years ago, there was an established adage\/joke among baseball fans, and it went something like this: the MLB season doesn\u2019t officially start until Mike Trout leads the league in Wins Above Replacement<\/em>. At the time, Trout was the undisputed best player in the league, and eventually other players\u2019 hot starts would fade\u2014leaving Trout standing alone at the top of the leaderboard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s 2026 now, so maybe it\u2019s time to give it a good ol\u2019 update. Let\u2019s say, oh, something along the lines of: the MLB season doesn\u2019t officially start until<\/em> Bobby Witt Jr. leads the league in Wins Above Replacement<\/em>. In any case, the season has officially started, because if you go look at the Fangraphs<\/a> and Baseball-Reference<\/a> version of WAR, you\u2019ll find that Witt has indeed accrued more WAR than any other American League player.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Over on Bluesky, Kevin O\u2019Brien of Royals Keep posted Witt\u2019s season batting percentiles and wondered if this could be the year that Witt wins the MVP. Yes, it\u2019s just May, but again, Witt is already leading the league in WAR. Is it his to lose? Is it finally his time?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But something Kevin said in the post also stuck with me: \u201c[Witt] doesn\u2019t have the home runs (yet),\u201d Kevin wrote. And while it\u2019s very clear that Witt is an excellent and extremely valuable baseball player, I think that idea deserves a little more exploration as it pertains to Witt\u2019s MVP chances.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There have been arguments about MVP forever, with some of them semantic and some of them philosophical. It\u2019s the \u201cmost valuable player\u201d award, but are we talking overall value or value to the team? To what extent do we reward individual accomplishment or positional difficulty? Do past MVPs factor into it? What about pitchers? Are there certain kinds of player who are rewarded more often?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These are all interesting arguments, but the reality is that the Baseball Writers\u2019 Association of America\u2014the MVP voters\u2014essentially consider the MVP to be a \u201cbest player\u201d award, and they generally only award a pitcher if that player is clearly the best player. But there are some other things at play, too, and I have a chart to illustrate them: the position player winners of the AL and NL MVP award dating back a dozen years, with 2020 and Shohei Ohtani\u2019s awards thrown out for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n First, the best way to get an MVP award is by being the best player, but the thing about that is that there are other great players also trying to be the best player. Kris Bryant\u2019s 2016 is a prime example here: a 7.5 fWAR season is, in the context of other MVPs, just ok. But no one else in the NL was as good, and so that 7.5 fWAR cleared. Witt, on the other hand, has had to content with Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh the last two years, both of whom put together historically great campaigns. Just no fighting that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Second, MVP award winners clear a gigantic offensive bar. The average position player MVP winner since 2014 has had a batting average of .314 and has swatted 42 home runs en route to a wRC+ of 176. That\u2019s the average<\/em> hitter. In Witt\u2019s best season (so far) in 2024, he was double-digit home runs away and seven points of wRC+ away from both figures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Third, there is simply a bias towards offense in MVP award voting. Most votes go how the WAR total goes, with nearly all winners on this list ranking as the top or second-best WAR in both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference versions. There were only three players who won<\/p>\n<\/div>\n MVP and ranked below second place in either fWAR or bWAR: Mike Trout in 2019, Bryce Harper in 2021, and Paul Goldschmidt in 2022. In all three situations, the voters prioritized bat over glove, overlooking WAR to do so. In 2019, it was Alex Bregman and Marcus Semien who lost out. In 2021, it was Trea Turner and Fernando Tatis Jr. who lost out. And in 2022, it was Nolan Arenado and Manny Machado who lost out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Witt\u2019s game particularly vulnerable to the biases of MVP voters. Witt is a very good hitter who also happens to be the best defensive player in baseball and also one of the deadliest basestealers in the league. But Witt is not going to hit 50 home runs. He\u2019s not going to walk at a 15% clip. He\u2019s probably never going to hit a 169 wRC+ again. There\u2019s a reason that none of the platinum glove winners have ever won an MVP; Arenado came the closest, but again, even though he accrued more WAR than Paul Goldschmidt, voters thought Goldschmidt\u2019s offense was more important than Arenado\u2019s defense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So, is it Witt\u2019s year to win MVP? I doubt it. That\u2019s not because I don\u2019t think Witt is good; on the contrary, I think Witt is clearly the best player in baseball because how he can impact the game every second he\u2019s on the field. I\u2019m just jaded about the process and about what voters value. I hope it is Witt\u2019s year to win MVP, because he certainly deserves it for how good he\u2019s been over the last two plus seasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About seven or eight years ago, there was an established adage\/joke among baseball fans, and it went something like this: the MLB season doesn\u2019t officially start until Mike Trout leads the league in Wins Above Replacement. At the time, Trout was the undisputed best player in the league, and eventually other players\u2019 hot starts would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2412502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[445712,340874],"class_list":["post-2412501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-kansas-city-royals-analysis","tag-royals-editorials-reactions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Is-this-the-year-for-Bobby-Witt-Jr-to-win.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2412501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2412503,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412501\/revisions\/2412503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2412502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2412501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2412501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2412501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n\n
\n \n Player<\/h3>\n<\/th>\n
\n Year<\/h3>\n<\/th>\n
\n AVG<\/h3>\n<\/th>\n
\n wRC+<\/h3>\n<\/th>\n
\n HR<\/h3>\n<\/th>\n
\n fWAR rank<\/h3>\n<\/th>\n
\n bWAR rank<\/h3>\n<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n\n
\n Aaron Judge<\/td>\n 2025<\/td>\n .331<\/td>\n 204<\/td>\n 53<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Aaron Judge<\/td>\n 2024<\/td>\n .322<\/td>\n 220<\/td>\n 58<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Ronald Acuna Jr.<\/td>\n 2023<\/td>\n .337<\/td>\n 171<\/td>\n 41<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Aaron Judge<\/td>\n 2022<\/td>\n .311<\/td>\n 206<\/td>\n 62<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Paul Goldschmidt<\/td>\n 2022<\/td>\n .317<\/td>\n 175<\/td>\n 35<\/td>\n 3<\/td>\n 2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Bryce Harper<\/td>\n 2021<\/td>\n .309<\/td>\n 170<\/td>\n 35<\/td>\n 3<\/td>\n 9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Cody Bellinger<\/td>\n 2019<\/td>\n .305<\/td>\n 161<\/td>\n 47<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Mike Trout<\/td>\n 2019<\/td>\n .291<\/td>\n 177<\/td>\n 45<\/td>\n 2<\/td>\n 3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Christian Yelich<\/td>\n 2018<\/td>\n .326<\/td>\n 167<\/td>\n 36<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Mookie Betts<\/td>\n 2018<\/td>\n .346<\/td>\n 185<\/td>\n 32<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Giancarlo Stanton<\/td>\n 2017<\/td>\n .281<\/td>\n 158<\/td>\n 59<\/td>\n 2<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Jose Altuve<\/td>\n 2017<\/td>\n .346<\/td>\n 160<\/td>\n 24<\/td>\n 2<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Kris Bryant<\/td>\n 2016<\/td>\n .292<\/td>\n 148<\/td>\n 39<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Mike Trout<\/td>\n 2016<\/td>\n .315<\/td>\n 170<\/td>\n 29<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Bryce Harper<\/td>\n 2015<\/td>\n .330<\/td>\n 197<\/td>\n 42<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Josh Donaldson<\/td>\n 2015<\/td>\n .297<\/td>\n 154<\/td>\n 41<\/td>\n 2<\/td>\n 2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Mike Trout<\/td>\n 2014<\/td>\n .287<\/td>\n 167<\/td>\n 36<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n 1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n AVERAGE<\/td>\n \n .314<\/td>\n 176<\/td>\n 42<\/td>\n 1.5<\/td>\n 1.8<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n