The Angels played the Yankees in New York last week, but their best player was only an observer in the visiting dugout.
“No Mike Trout,” viewers were informed by Michael Kay, the Yankees’ play-by-play announcer. “He’s going to have surgery and that will end his season. He was having some year, but he’s out with Norton’s neuroma, which is affecting the toe on the right foot. It’s not supposed to be a serious surgery, and he should recover in plenty of time for spring training, but it did cut short his season and now leaves open the question: Is he still the M.V.P.?”
Huh? When did Trout win this year’s American League most valuable player award? When and how did Kay get a vote? He’s not even a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, the organization whose members vote for the most prestigious post-season awards.
John Smoltz and Aaron Goldsmith aren’t BBWAA members either, but earlier this month they discussed Trout on a FOX-televised game and left no doubt that Trout was the M.V.P.
But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Mike Trout may be the best player in baseball, but he’s not the most valuable.
How valuable can he be? He plays for a losing team that is buried in fourth place in its division. If the Angels didn’t have him in their lineup, how worse could they be? In fifth place? More games under .500?
I am not denigrating Trout. I readily acknowledge his talent, his production and his consistency. I also acknowledge that his value suffers from the team surrounding him. If he played for a team that had a winning record and was good enough to contend for a post-season spot, Trout’s value could be measured and would mean more than it does on a poor team. But the M.V.P. award is not for a good player on a poor team.
Some people see this as penalizing Trout for playing for a poor team. Not at all. He plays for the team he chose to play for. He could have played out his contract through next season, but he opted to accept the Angels’ offer of an extension that will pay him $426.5 million through 2030, basically the rest of his career. That was certainly an appealing offer, but a few other teams, better teams, would very likely have been willing to make that kind of offer for the best player in the major leagues.
So we don’t have to feel sorry for Trout, and we wouldn’t have to feel sorry for him if he wasn’t named M.V.P. or finished second or third in the voting if there were more deserving candidates, as I believe there were last year when Trout received 24 votes for second as runner-up to Mookie Betts of Boston. It was the seventh time in seven full seasons Trout has finished in the top four and sixth time in the top two, winning the award in 2014 and ’16.
OK, I get it. The writers are poised to vote for Trout before he sees a pitch, before the Angels win a game.
Until recently, writers took the phrase “most valuable” seriously. There were a few glitches but nothing like recent developments. Last year I asked writers who voted for Trout first, second or third why they placed him so high despite the Angels poor finish (80-82, fourth).
One reply struck me as inane.
Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register wrote that “’most valuable’ and ‘best’ are the same thing. That’s how it works if you’re discussing the value of anything else. I don’t know where the word ‘valuable’ got twisted into something else. If you think otherwise, then you must also believe Brock Holt is more valuable than Mike Trout too. Do you want to write that column?”
IF Fletcher is right – and I don’t think he is – writers got it wrong for most of the years they voted beginning in 1931. Fletcher has come late to the ball, and he is entitled to whatever opinion he wants to have. But to say the word “valuable got twisted into something else” is bizarre.
If there’s a problem with the voting, it is the lack of a definition of most valuable player. That lack allows voters like Fletcher to find reason to vote for someone who really isn’t most valuable. Jack O’Connell, BBWAA secretary-treasurer, says every voter receives these instructions:
There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the Most Valuable Player in each league to his team. The MVP need not come from a division winner or other playoff qualifier. The rules of the voting remain the same as they were written on the first ballot in 1931:
1. Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.
2. Number of games played.
3. General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.
4. Former winners are eligible.
5. Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team. You are also urged to give serious consideration to all your selections, from 1 to 10. A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of an election. You must fill in all 10 places on your ballot.
Only regular-season performances are to be taken into consideration. Keep in mind that all players are eligible for MVP, including pitchers and designated hitters.
If the award were for the best player, voters would have a much easier time selecting a winner. Statistics, especially today’s metrics, can usually provide the answer. When I was voting for M.V.P., I would discuss or debate with other writers or internally with myself the value of one player versus another.
I remember the challenge the 1978 American League vote presented. Ron Guidry of the Yankees and Jim Rice of the Red Sox both had great seasons, Guidry finishing with a 25-3 record and 1.74 earned run average, Rice with 46 home runs and 139 runs batted in. Guidry’s 25th win was the Yankees’ victory in the playoff game with the Red Sox.
Either player could have been voted the M.V.P., and no one could have questioned it. Rice won the award, receiving 20 first-place votes and 352 points to 8 and 291 for Guidry. After much debate, one of Guidry’s first-place votes was mine. The other New York voter opted for Rice.
I voted for Guidry because I felt his 25 wins were worth more than 25 wins and at least made up for his pitching only once every five days while Rice played in all of Boston’s 163 games. If I were voting in that same election today, I cannot say how I would vote, but it would not be an automatic type vote as writers have adopted for Trout.
If I were voting today, for this season’s M.V.P., my vote would go to DJ LeMahieu, the Yankees’ versatile infielder, who has epitomized the definition of most valuable.
Entering Sunday’s game against Toronto, the 31-year-old LeMahieu had started 26 games at first base, 64 at second and 32 at third with one game thrown in as designated hitter.
According to Elias Sports Bureau, he was hitting .355 with 6 home runs and 20 runs batted in while starting at first, .312 with 8 and 45 as a second baseman and .326 with 11 and 32 as a third baseman. In eight previous seasons, mostly with Colorado, he primarily played second base with scattered games at the other infield positions.
Most prominently, LeMahieu won the National League batting title in 2016 with a .348 average, and he won Gold Gloves in 2014, ’17 and ’18. The Yankees signed him as a free agent last January, getting him at a bargain, two years for $24 million.
How a Yankees’ play-by-player announcer could ignore LeMahieu as an M.V.P. candidate and cede the award to fourth-place Trout is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps Kay can be excused because he missed a lot of games this season while recuperating from vocal cord surgery. Presumably, though, he was watching Yankees game on his network.
On the game last week that Kay declared Trout the M.V.P. his broadcast partner Paul O’Neill said nothing about Trout or LeMahieu or anyone else. However, the next night, after LeMahieu slugged a three-run home run that ignited the Yankees’ division-clinching win over Trout’s Angels, O’Neill said, “Is there really a player out there who has been more valuable to a team than what LeMahieu has been to the Yankees this year? It’s ridiculous what he has done offensively and defensively.”
That comment apparently woke up Kay.
“I would be hard pressed to find one,” Kay remarked weakly.
“What the Yankees have been through this year,” O’Neill said, “LeMahieu has filled the void everywhere.”
Like Kay, though, O’Neill did not utter the letters M.V.P.