Baseball’s MVP award can be a hotly debated topic for a number of reasons.
While Bryce Harper was on another level in the NL this season, trying to pick between AL stars Josh Donaldson and Mike Trout was a tougher proposition. A number of factors play into the minds of the voters.
Being part of a winning team is important; and while Donaldson led his team to the playoffs, Trout sat at home this fall. But is it is his fault that the front office wasn’t able to go out and trade for David Price and Troy Tulowitzki this past summer?
Another hard-to-evaluate point to consider is the player’s defensive contributions—or lack thereof.
Although all kinds of metrics have impacted the way defense can be measured, they’re not all the same. While Andrelton Simmons won the Wilson Defensive Player of the Year award for best overall defender in the game, he somehow didn’t win his third straight Gold Glove at shortstop.
Finally, there’s the pitcher versus hitter debate. Here, voting can be inconsistent. Several times a starting pitcher has been worthy of the MVP, only to fall short. In other years, a reliever (which is probably overvalued by the voters) has come away with the award.
All that said, here are the five biggest MVP snubs over the past 35 years.
5. 1984: Detroit’s Willie Hernandez Over Baltimore’s Cal Ripken Jr.
With all the new overall metrics to judge a player’s value, this would never happen in modern-day baseball. Ripken’s value in 1984 was worth 10.0 WAR (wins above replacement, according to Baseball-Reference.com), which was more than anyone that season. Unfortunately for him, the Orioles finished fifth in the AL East, while Hernandez’s Tigers won the World Series. For his part, Hernandez compiled 32 saves with a 1.93 ERA, good for a 4.8 WAR.
4. 1992: Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley Over Boston’s Roger Clemens or Minnesota’s Kirby Puckett
Eckersley was great for the A’s with 51 saves and a 1.91 ERA, but he was worth just 2.9 WAR for the season, though Oakland won the pennant. Clemens finished 14th in the MVP voting and third in the Cy Young race though he had the highest WAR (8.9) of anyone in the AL, while posting an 18–11 record with a 2.41 ERA and 208 strikeouts. Puckett finished second in the MVP voting after hitting .329/.374/.490 (average/on-base/slugging) with 19 home runs and 110 RBIs, compiling a WAR of 7.1.
