When the Dust Settles, Who Wins NL MVP?
By Louis Addeo-Weiss
For the AL MVP race, though he will miss the rest of the season, the consensus around Major League Baseball is that Angels center fielder Mike Trout will win his third Most Valuable Player Award.
Trout’s 8.3 bWAR (baseball-reference) and 8.6 fWAR (FanGraphs) lead the American League, as well as leading the sport in OPS+ (183) and on-base percentage (.438).
The narrative surrounding the National League for most of the 2019 season, however, has centered on Cody Bellinger and how it seemed he be the runaway winner come season’s end, and for good reason. Baseball-reference tells us that his 8.3 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is tops among all players in the National League.
But, it is important we do not forget last year’s winner, Milwaukee Brewers right fielder Christian Yelich. While his season ended with a broken knee cap sustained during a game against his former club the Miami Marlins, Yelich’s 7.1 bWAR has entered him in the running for back-to-back MVPs, which, should Yelich win it, would become the first player do so in consecutive seasons since Miguel Cabrera did so in the American League in 2012 and ‘13.
At the time of his injury, Yelich, who had 580 plate appearances, lead and still leads the NL in on-base-percentage (.429) and OPS+ (178), with his slugging-percentage (.671) and OPS (1.100) leading all of Major League Baseball.
And while baseball-reference sways towards Bellinger as far as WAR is concerned, which is aided by his total +23 defensive runs saved at three different positions, analytics-based site FanGraphs tells a different tale.
By way of their NL leaderboard, FanGraphs tells us that, in fact, Yelich has been the better overall player, as noted by his 7.8 WAR in comparison to Bellinger’s 7.4.
The tug-of-war (no pun intended) comes by way of a deeper dive into the two players’ overall numbers.
A statistic such as walk-rate (BB%) slightly favors Bellinger over Yelich (14.6 to 13.8), as well as strikeout-rate (K%), where Bellinger has struck out just 16.7% of the time to Yelich’s 20.3%.
Yelich, however, has outslugged Bellinger .671 to .631, posted a higher wRC+ (weighted runs created plus), 173 to 162, higher on-base percentage (.429 to .408), stolen 30 bases to Bellinger’s 13, and hit 44 home runs in 50 less plate appearances than Bellinger, who has 45 through 630 plate appearances.
It is metrics such as these, which showcase a player doing nearly as much as one player in less time, that leads us to believe Yelich is the clear favorite, but a third candidate furthers the debate.
This third candidate in question is Washington Nationals third baseman Anthony Rendon.
For Rendon, who has posted 7.1 WAR according to FanGraphs, and 6.5 according to baseball-reference, his case’s traction lies in the notion of the league’s MVP coming from a team whose overall performance would be greatly affected minus this player.
And it is the Nationals slow start in 2019 and their resurgence mid-season that has kept Rendon in the conversation.
Sitting at 24-33 on the morning of June 1st, many were starting to wonder if the team would be sellers at baseball’s trade deadline, but as of September 18th, after a period where team posted a +139 run differential, going 59-35, the Nationals sit in line for one of the two National League Wild Card spots.
The same can be said in the case of Yelich’s MVP candidacy, as the Brewers, who’s starting pitching woes (4.58 ERA) are similarly echoed by the Nationals’ bullpen woes, whose 5.84 ERA ranks last among all 30 teams, but despite these aforementioned issues, Milwaukee enters play on September 19th with an 82-70 record, just 2.5 games behind the division leading St. Louis Cardinals.
Between Rendon, Yelich, and Bellinger, Rendon’s 13.2% strikeout-rate is the lowest of the three. Traditional metrics such as batting average, while inundated in today’s player evaluation circles, still favor Rendon, who has hit .330 across 604 plate appearances this season, with a .333 BABIP (batting average on balls in play), a metric which excludes home runs.
And while his .414 on base slightly edges out Bellinger’s .408 clip, Bellinger and Yelich, in some order, will likely receive first and second place votes come decision time, leaving Rendon as the likely third-place vote getter.
In regards to the previously mentioned Trout, who has helped shift the narrative surrounding Yelich and Rendon that a player worthy of the MVP must come from a team in the midst of playoff contention, it still leaves a few fascinating quandary for the voters.
Does the player on a team littered with major league depth and the best record in the league take home the hardware or will we see the main cogs in either Milwaukee or Washington’s playoff hopes come away victorious?
Were I to have a vote, and given how great he was in the time he was on the field, Yelich would be my MVP, but given what Bellinger has done on the offensive side, as well as his terrific defensive acumine, logic tells me he winds up winning.
But, as much as me and a myriad of other fans, writers, and voters may speculate, none of us will know until the winner is announced on November 14th, so, for now, keep crunching the numbers and continue to speculate.
