The Ten Worst MVP Choices of the Past 25 Years

There's been a lot of talk about Jimmy Rollins' NL MVP win, with more stats-oriented people noting how it's kind of a joke that he won and traditionalists arguing that he was the best player on a playoff-bound team. With Rollins in mind, I decided to compile a list of what I thought were the ten worst choices for MVP in the past 25 years. Note: I rely a lot on the statistical measures WARP1 and VORP in this list, though I do also discuss the writers' inconsistencies on a year-to-year basis, explaining in some places how the vote didn't make sense even by more traditional measures.

10. 2006 NL: Ryan Howard
Barry Bonds won four consecutive MVP awards with insane numbers between 2001 and 2004, so perhaps after Albert Pujols finally broke through in 2005, the voters decided they wanted to show that no one was up to Bonds’ level by withholding a second consecutive award. Or perhaps they were swayed by the best storyline. Neither would surprise; either would be dumb. By VORP, which measures the number of runs a player contributed to his team above what a replacement player would have done, Pujols was the most valuable player in the league; he generated four more runs for the Cardinals than Howard did for the Phillies. He also had a higher batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage, this latter in spite of the clear difference-maker in the voting, Howard’s 58 home runs. Pujols’ 11.8 WARP1, the number of wins he added to the team above a replacement player and which, unlike VORP, factors in defense, was the highest of his career to date; Howard, a below-average fielder at first, was worth three and a half fewer wins. The only categories in which Howard really prevailed were the major counting stats: home runs and RBI. The voters allowed themselves to be swayed by these gaudy numbers even though Howard did not make the playoffs and Pujols did. Howard was not a truly terrible choice for MVP, but he had no business defeating Pujols.

9. 2002 AL: Miguel Tejada
Alex Rodriguez has three MVP awards, but he should probably have more. Of course, “MVP” is usually defined by the voters as “best player on a playoff-bound team,” so perhaps it’s no surprise that Rodriguez was only recognized once (2003) prior to landing in New York. One of the more egregious screwjobs came in 2002, when the only player in baseball more valuable than Rodriguez was Barry Bonds and his 1.381 OPS. Rodriguez was second in baseball and first in the AL with a VORP of 86.4, and while Jim Thome was pretty much exactly as valuable offensively, Rodriguez had one of his best defensive years at shortstop, making him worth 11 wins over a replacement player, while Thome was a below-average first baseman, giving him a WARP1 of just 8.1. Of course, the Rangers lost 90 games – we can certainly argue over how much it was Rodriguez’s “fault” that the Rangers had lousy pitching during his years there, but the fact remains that the ’02 club had Chan Ho Park, Ismael Valdez and Dave Burba in the starting rotation, and Hideki Irabu closing games, and a team ERA of 5.15. Tejada’s Oakland team, meanwhile, won 103 games. It’s not surprising that the voters wanted to reward the best player on the team, and Tejada was that, even if he was only the third-most valuable shortstop in the AL (behind not just A-Rod but Nomar Garciaparra as well).

8. 1999 AL: Ivan Rodriguez
This one, though it pains me to admit it, was just a travesty. Derek Jeter was the most valuable offensive player in the American League by nearly twenty runs over the second-place Nomar Garciaparra, and was worth more than 9 wins above replacement. This remains Jeter’s best year by far: 219 hits, 24 homers, 102 RBI, 134 runs scored, a .349 batting average, .438 OBP, and .552 slugging, all still career highs. What’s more, he played on a team that won its division and he played in New York. So how did he not win? More importantly, how on earth did he finish a distant sixth in the voting? The answer must be that Rodriguez was a great defensive catcher; he was worth nearly as many wins as Jeter (8.9) despite being significantly less valuable offensively. Of course, he had better counting stats – 35 homers, 113 RBI – and he did hit .332. So he looked nearly as good on offense even though he actually wasn’t (Jeter’s extra 82 points of OBP have a way of doing that) and his superior defense was a good story (though the writers so rarely factor in defense that this reeks of inconsistency). Plus since Jeter’s team had won 114 games the previous year, the clear assumption was that he had a lot of help. And sure, he did, but that doesn’t, or anyway shouldn’t, diminish his individual value, though obviously it makes it tougher for writers to see it. Bernie Williams was a top-ten offensive player that year, but then so was Rafael Palmeiro in Texas. Palmeiro finished fifth in the voting, a spot ahead of Jeter. Two Indians teammates, the third division winner, tied for third place. The voters had no objection to the idea that you could have two really valuable guys on the same team. Yet it certainly seems like Jeter was hurt by the team he was on. (Fun fact about this year: Rodriguez didn’t even receive the most first-place votes; second-place finisher Pedro Martinez did. Rodriguez managed to win, I suspect because Martinez – as a pitcher – was left off a number of ballots entirely. Martinez actually had a WARP1 of 14.6 that year, meaning that it’s reasonable to argue he should have won. At any rate, Rodriguez was not a good choice.)

7. 2006 AL: Justin Morneau
As a casual Twins fan and Yankees hater, I was happy to see Morneau beat out Derek Jeter for the MVP in 2006, but the statistical fact of the matter is that he shouldn’t have. Morneau’s VORP of 52.0 was good for just 26^th in all of baseball and just 13^th in the AL; Jeter led the AL at 80.5, a pretty significant difference. Indeed, VORP suggests that Morneau wasn’t even the most valuable player on his own team, as Joe Mauer was fifth in the AL at 66.9. Morneau played good defense at a less valuable defensive position; his WARP1 was 7.8. Mauer, as a good defensive catcher, was worth a win more than Morneau; Jeter, who actually had a good year with the glove for a change and who plays one of the most valuable defensive positions, was worth 9.1. The trick, of course, is that Morneau had big counting stats – 34 home runs and 130 RBI – which Jeter did not (much though I hate admitting it, Jeter’s offensive value to a team simply cannot be measured accurately by sportswriters who love home runs and RBI), and of course there's the fact that Morneau had a strong second half as the Twins rebounded to win the division on the final day. Another MVP win for the best storyline candidate.

6. 1984 AL: Willie Hernandez
With the rise of players like Alex Rodriguez, we sometimes forget just how impressive Cal Ripken Jr. was in his prime. Some people talk like he only made the Hall of Fame because of his longevity, but the fact is that he was easily the premier offensive shortstop in the game for the better part of a decade, and he was a good fielder to boot. This is exemplified by his 1983-1984 two-season stretch in which he was worth a combined 26.1 wins above replacement, a fairly staggering number by most normal standards. Prior to the advent of sabermetrics, however, no one knew what “wins above replacement” was or how to measure it, and simply relied on traditional numbers and assumptions. How else to explain that in 1984, a year in which he led baseball in VORP and was worth more than 13 wins above a replacement player, Ripken finished 27^th in the MVP voting, receiving just a single vote. Even accounting for the fact that no one knew about WARP and VORP and wouldn’t have considered them meaningful even if they had, the vote was just strange; Willie Upshaw received more votes than Ripken despite having fewer hits, doubles, home runs and RBI, fewer walks, more strikeouts, a lower batting average, and despite playing a less meaningful defensive position for a team that also did not make the playoffs (though the Blue Jays finished second while the Orioles finished fifth).

Of course the most insane part was Hernandez actually winning the award, perhaps the most egregious example of “picking a player from the team that wins” in history. It’s not that Hernandez didn’t have a great year for a relief pitcher – but he was a relief pitcher. He was the seventh-most valuable pitcher in the AL that year, although, perhaps surprisingly, he was in fact the most valuable pitcher on that Tigers squad, and since the Tigers won 104 games, well, someone had to get rewarded, and it couldn’t be a Tigers hitter since none of them had 100 RBIs and Lance Parrish, the closest to the mark with 98, had only hit .237. As vital as Hernandez was to the Tigers’ success, he illustrates the problem with just picking the best player you can think of from the best team in the league; frequently, the best team is the best team not because of one player. Replacing Hernandez with Joe Anybody would have cost the Tigers nine wins – and they still would have won 95 games and run away with the division (which, as it was, they won by 15 games). Replacing Ripken with a replacement shortstop would have cost the Orioles fully 13 wins – and they would have dropped from fifth to sixth, which of course is why no one paid any attention. And that just shows why it’s all the more important to have more sophisticated statistics – just about the only differences between Ripken’s MVP year of 1983 and his 27^th-place finish of 1984 were a handful of batting average points, 16 RBIs, and his team’s finish. The fact that he could put up nearly identical seasons and have the team drop four spots in the standings tells you it’s not about one player, and if Ripken was really valuable enough to be MVP in 1983, he was valuable enough to be MVP in 1984 too. I guess it’s too much to expect that kind of consideration from old-school sportswriters.

5. 2007 NL: Jimmy Rollins
Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus derided the Rollins win, saying he had won not the MVP but the “Most Valuable Copy Creator Award.” It’s a difficult charge to deny; Rollins, after all, was the most consistent player on a team that had charged from seeming doom to a playoff spot in just the last few weeks of the season, and he had that fun stat line (20+ doubles, triples, homers and stolen bases). What’s more, it wasn’t a particularly good year for NL MVP candidates; two of the four playoff teams didn’t have a single player in the voting’s top ten. Still, the writers have certainly given the MVP to non-playoff-bound players before; it happened in 2006. And by virtually no measure was Rollins even a top-five player in the league, let alone a true MVP candidate. He got on base at only a .344 clip, and failed to hit .300 despite 212 hits – thanks to his 716 at-bats, the most in league history. He was worth 9.2 wins over a replacement player, which is a pretty good number, but it wasn’t even the best on his own team, as Chase Utley put up a 9.3 despite nearly 200 fewer at-bats than Rollins thanks to injury. It can also be argued that Rollins wasn’t even the most valuable shortstop in the NL, as Hanley Ramirez had the same number of hits in 77 fewer at-bats and had a significantly higher VORP (though Rollins held a slight edge in WARP1 due to Ramirez’s defensive shortcomings).

The whole thing was probably doomed from the start, however; the league’s MVP should have been David Wright, and he couldn’t even finish top three, as voters irrationally blamed him for the Mets’ struggles down the stretch even though he hit .442 with a .492 OBP in the last two weeks of the season. Meanwhile, Prince Fielder finished third even though Wright had a better BA and OBP and was worth four more wins than Fielder, in part because Wright was a good fielder at a valuable defensive position whereas the ironically-named Fielder was a butcher at a lesser one. But the voters were swayed by Fielder’s impressive 50 home runs enough to vote him third. With that in mind, it’s hardly surprising that voters preferred Rollins and his 20-20-20-20 season over Wright, and for that matter over Matt Holliday, who wouldn’t have been the best choice either but who was at least distinguishable as the best player on his own team.

4. 2001 AL: Ichiro Suzuki
The 2001 AL vote provides one of the best – or worst, depending on how you want to look at it – examples of how the voters simply cannot stay consistent from year to year in any reasoning except “Best Headlines Made.” Ichiro had a great year in 2001, his first in MLB; he hit .350 and banged out 242 hits, to date his second-highest single-season total in a career that has seen him rack up almost 1600 hits in just seven full seasons and tie the all-time single-season record. Nevertheless, he’s mostly a singles hitter and was only the third-most valuable offensive player on his own team. Bret Boone was #1 on that Mariners squad, and it’s even odder that he was overlooked due to his impressive counting stats: 37 homers, 141 RBIs. He was an average second baseman but still had a WARP1 of 9.7; Ichiro, a good right fielder, was worth more than a win less. The question becomes: Why Ichiro? Yes, Ichiro was new to the Mariners, and they won 116 games – but Boone was in his first year as a Mariner as well. I suspect the answer is that Boone’s season was seen as an aberration – since he had been a decent but never great player in nine previous seasons – while Ichiro swept into the US on the back of a huge reputation as a hitter in Japan and helped deliver a record-tying number of team wins. (Boone’s HR and RBI numbers were also not as impressive as they might have been due to the power explosion in the NL.) Yet again, the winner was the guy who generated the most interesting headlines.

3. 1985 AL: Don Mattingly
While Mattingly wasn’t an awful choice in general, the 1985 vote proved to be yet another example of inconsistency from the writers. Mattingly did have big counting stats – 35 homers and 145 RBI – but his team missed the playoffs, while George Brett – whose VORP was much higher anyway – led the Royals into the playoffs (and eventually to the World Series, though of course voting is done before the playoffs begin). Brett’s OBP was .436, as he walked over 100 times while striking out just 49. Mattingly was also a rare strikeout (just 41 in 1985 and just 444 in a 7000-at-bat career), but he also didn’t walk nearly as much. At any event, Brett was more valuable in just about every respect, yet he didn’t win, even though the voters in the same year gave the NL MVP to Willie McGee, in part because he was the best player on the division-winning Cardinals. Mattingly wasn’t even the most valuable player on the Yankees (that honor belongs to Rickey Henderson, who had a higher VORP and was worth 13 wins above replacement, two more than even Brett; Henderson finished third in the voting), and they failed even to make the playoffs. So why did he win? Probably the RBIs; they’re just a stat it’s easy for the average voter to wrap his head around. Never mind that Henderson getting on base at a .419 clip in front of Mattingly helped those RBI numbers a lot (Henderson scored 146 runs that year). Mattingly was no doubt also aided by the Yankee mystique; in 1985 we were a few years removed from Reggie Jackson, and sportswriters were no doubt looking for the next great Yankee slugger, and it seemed they’d found him in Mattingly. (Sadly for them, Donnie Baseball failed to hit as many as 35 home runs ever again, and his career sank into a permanent mediocrity once the 1990s rolled around.)

2. 1987 NL: Andre Dawson
This one hurts. But not only was Dawson not even the most valuable Cub in 1987, he wasn’t in the top forty players in baseball in VORP, and he played right field – not among the top half of most challenging defensive positions – just slightly above average. His WARP1 was 6.7, and even using more conventional stats, he only hit .287 and had an OBP of .328. However, he jacked 49 home runs and knocked in 137, and in the 1980s, 49 was a ton of home runs; no one had hit 50 since George Foster in 1977, and no one would until Cecil Fielder in 1990. Nevertheless, in spite of his home runs Dawson was a less valuable offensive player in 1987 than such noted names as Randy Ready, Bill Doran, Juan Samuel and Kal Daniels. All this might not be such a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that Dawson played for a last-place team. It’s easy to see how Dawson slipped through – the rest of the top five was Ozzie Smith, Jack Clark, Tim Wallach and Will Clark. The first two both played for the eventual pennant-winning Cardinals, and indeed that was probably the problem; Clark and his 35 home runs likely drew votes that would have pushed Smith over the top. Despite not hitting a single home run, Smith was still in the top ten in the NL in VORP; adding in his superior defense at short gave Smith a WARP1 of 10.3, several wins ahead of Dawson. The true MVP was probably Tony Gwynn, who hit .370, but he played for a 97-loss Padres team and finished a distant eighth in the voting.

1. 1995 AL: Mo Vaughn
Vaughn is another good example of a guy who wasn’t even the most valuable player on his own team. Vaughn’s 1995 VORP of 52.4 was 11^th in the AL, while John Valentin was worth 22 more runs and 2.4 wins, thanks to his adequate shortstop defense and Vaughn’s adventures at first base. Vaughn hit 39 home runs and knocked in 126, but how he was able to top Albert Belle and Edgar Martinez is somewhat baffling. Belle hit 50 in the shortened season, also knocking in 126; Martinez had a better batting average and OPS than either Belle or Vaughn, but he was clearly hurt by the fact that he didn’t play the field. He hit so well, however, that he was still worth 8.7 wins above replacement, nearly four more than Vaughn. Belle, who had a good fielding year in left, was worth 11.2, more than twice as many as Vaughn. Martinez and Belle were also 1-2 in the league in VORP. Of course, these are all fairly complicated stats that weren’t in any kind of common use then, and furthermore they don’t take into account the fact that Belle was a jackass. Baseball writers have been known to be somewhat vindictive about these things. Still, with the stats already favoring Belle and the Indians going a rather astonishing 100-44 in the shortened campaign, it’s kind of amazing people were that unwilling to vote for him. He did only lose by eight points, but there’s basically no excuse for this one. Belle was the most valuable player in the league by a pretty wide margin; it’s hard to find any reason except that writers didn’t like him. Not sure how that explains Barry Bonds’ seven MVPs, but then he’d probably have more if he were more likable, too.