I didn’t have an award ballot once again this year, which leaves me free to comment on all six of the player awards before the results are announced. Five of these awards look like they’ll come down to two names apiece, and on four of those, I’m probably in line with the broader consensus.
When deciding how I would vote on MVP and Cy Young Awards, I start with the rational metrics, looking at Wins Above Replacement totals on both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference, and adjust from there. At the end of the day, I’m more comfortable with what an objective system built off actual run values says than with what my intuition or eyeballs, which are subject to all manner of biases, might say. If I’m going to diverge from what the best available metrics tell us, I’d better have a very good reason.
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On Rookie of the Year, however, I consider more than just in-season performance, since the candidates generally don’t spend the same portion of the year in the majors —something exacerbated now by service-time games — and this shouldn’t just be an award given to the guy who played the most. I also consider a player’s age, since the same performances by two players, one of whom is 20 and one of whom is 28, are not equally impressive or indicative of a player’s future potential, and the sustainability of the player’s production. The point of the Rookie of the Year Award is to highlight the next Mike Trout, not the next Pat Listach or Joe Charboneau.
As for manager of the year, with no real concrete way to evaluate those guys, I’d rather just abstain.
American League MVP
1. Shohei Ohtani, RHP/DH, LA Angels
2. Vlad Guerrero, Jr., 1B, Toronto
3. Marcus Semien, 2B, Toronto
4. Jose Ramírez, 3B, Cleveland
5. Cedric Mullins, OF, Baltimore
6. Carlos Correa, SS, Houston
7. Gerrit Cole, RHP, NY Yankees
8. Xander Bogaerts, SS, Boston
9. Nathan Eovaldi, RHP, Boston
10. José Altuve, 2B, Houston
This is a two-man race, and really it should be a one-man race — Ohtani has been historic, yes, but he’s also just been plain more valuable than anyone else. He’s a unicorn in many ways; he’s striking out 30 percent of the time, which only a handful of hitters can do and still be productive, and he’s still been a top-10 hitter in the American League. And he’s finally been the pitcher the Angels thought they were getting when they first signed him, before the elbow injury first reared its head and started him on the road to Tommy John surgery.
That’s nothing against the Impaler, who has been the most valuable hitter in baseball this year (by a run over Juan Soto, per FanGraphs), but he’s a first baseman whose total value takes a hit because he plays a lower-valued position. This would be more interesting if Marcus Semien had played his natural position of shortstop this year; when he played there in 2019, he produced at the plate at a very similar rate to this year, and was worth 7.6 fWAR/8.4 rWAR. Semien at shortstop in 2021 might actually have been the most valuable player in the American League. It’s an academic question, but I do traffic in those from time to time.
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As for the rest of the ballot, Mullins would get my Breakout Player of the Year award in the AL, going from a career WAR of -0.4 before this year to 5.7 WAR this year, with career highs in walk and strikeout rates and hard-hit rate. Lower workloads are going to mean fewer pitchers on my MVP ballots, and probably more ballots from voters with no pitchers at all as advanced metrics no longer put them on the same level of production as everyday players.
National League MVP
1. Zach Wheeler, RHP, Philadelphia
2. Juan Soto, OF, Washington
3. Corbin Burnes, RHP, Milwaukee
4. Fernando Tatis, Jr., SS, San Diego
5. Bryce Harper, OF, Philadelphia
6. Trea Turner, SS, LA Dodgers/Washington
7. Paul Goldschmidt, 1B, St. Louis
8. Bryan Reynolds, OF, Pittsburgh
9. Brandon Crawford, SS, San Francisco
10. Austin Riley, 3B, Atlanta
My guess is that Soto will win this award, and that’s fine too, but Wheeler leads all NL players — hitters and pitchers — in rWAR and is second in fWAR, behind Burnes, who has a 1.56 FIP but was 41 IP behind Wheeler heading into play Tuesday night. If the Phillies miss the playoffs with two of the top three or four players in the league, plus another in the top 12 in J.T. Realmuto, that’s a story in and of itself. Wheeler leads all MLB pitchers in innings pitched and is second in strikeouts, sixth in ERA, and second in FIP (fielding independent pitching). He’s faced 823 batters, which leads the majors, and means he was involved in more plate appearances as a pitcher than any position player was as a hitter, which is how a pitcher can, in fact, be more valuable than a position player.
Soto versus Harper is its own battle — they’re essentially tied in fWAR, but Soto has a 1.3 win advantage in rWAR because dRS, the defensive metric Baseball-Reference uses, has always been exceptionally hard on Harper, rating him as the worst defensive player in baseball in 2017. By Outs Above Average, Harper is well below the median, so that’s a good enough argument for me to slide him down to fourth on this ballot. Tatis is going to end up missing about 30 games but was probably the most valuable player in the NL for the playing time he did get, and his pace would put him at 8.1 fWAR in a full 162 games, which would indeed have made him my MVP. You could put a line after the top six and then fill in the last four slots with any of at least a dozen names.
American League Cy Young
1. Gerrit Cole, RHP, NY Yankees
2. Nathan Eovaldi, RHP, Boston
3. Robbie Ray, LHP, Toronto
4. Carlos Rodón, LHP, Chicago White Sox
5. Lance Lynn, RHP, Chicago White Sox
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Ray winning would be an amazing story — he walked nearly a man an inning last year and seemed to be pitching himself out of baseball, only to post by far the lowest walk rate of his career in 2021 — but he just hasn’t been as good as the two ahead of him. Cole has struck out more guys, walked fewer guys, and been a little less homer-prone, pitching almost as many innings. If this ballot was 10 deep, the White Sox would have three guys in my top seven, with Lucas Giolito on the ballot; they have four of the top seven pitchers in the AL this year by fWAR, with Dylan Cease, a breakout candidate of mine for last season, also making the list.
National League Cy Young
1. Zach Wheeler, RHP, Philadelphia
2. Corbin Burnes, RHP, Milwaukee
3. Max Scherzer, RHP, LA Dodgers/Washington
4. Walker Buehler, RHP, LA Dodgers
5. Brandon Woodruff, RHP, Milwaukee
See the MVP discussion for why I put Wheeler above Burnes despite the latter’s big edge in FIP and fWAR. Burnes’s innings total would be the lowest ever to win a Cy Young Award in a full season of baseball, which isn’t in and of itself a dealbreaker — that bar is likely to continue to drop as the nature of starting pitching continues to change — but is a factor when you have a pitcher pitching at nearly the same level with a 41-inning advantage. It’s really down to those two, but Scherzer has yet again had a remarkable, Cy-worthy year, further burnishing what was already a Hall of Fame resume.
American League Rookie of the Year
1. Wander Franco, SS, Tampa Bay
2. Luis Garcia, RHP, Houston
3. Randy Arozarena, OF, Tampa Bay
Franco has the narrative in his favor — his 41-game on-base streak, the longest ever by a 20-year-old, second-longest by a player 21 or younger — but he’s also been the best rookie in baseball since he came up. He’s played just 64 games as I write this, and has produced 3.4 rWAR/2.4 fWAR in that time, and did I mention that he’s just 20 years old? There’s only one other rookie position player under age 22 in the majors this year, and that’s Jarred Kelenic, who has been better since his return from Triple A but remains well below replacement level on the season. (I’m not worried. He’s going to be a star.) Franco was comfortably on a 6-WAR pace as a 20-year-old shortstop. I know that his lower playing time will work against him for some voters, but this isn’t the MVP award, where more is just plain better. We’re trying to identify the most promising rookies here. Nobody comes close to Franco.
García has quietly been the best rookie pitcher in the AL, with 161 punchouts in 150 innings, a 3.23 ERA, and 2.8 rWAR/3.2 fWAR produced. I’d give him the nod over Arozarena, who trails García in fWAR but leads in rWAR, because pitchers’ workloads are so limited — he’s actually 13th among AL pitchers in fWAR this year, while Arozarena is 41st among hitters. That may be a better argument for splitting this award into hitters and pitchers now that pitchers just work so much less than they did even 10 years ago. I know Adolis García will get votes, with 30 homers and plus defense, but he’s 28 and has a .288 OBP. Those are exactly the kind of performances this award shouldn’t honor. Shane McClanahan and Logan Gilbert could get some votes as well.
National League Rookie of the Year
1. Jonathan India, 2B, Cincinnati
2. Trevor Rogers, LHP, Miami
3. Dylan Carlson, OF, St. Louis
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This is a two-man race; nobody other than India (3.6 rWAR/3.8 fWAR) or Rogers (3.2/3.9) should get a first- or second-place vote. I leaned toward India on the greater playing time, but it’s a very fine distinction and I have zero objection to anyone who goes Rogers 1/India 2.
It isn’t a factor on my hypothetical ballot, but both offer interesting stories in how they got to these great rookie seasons. India was the fifth overall pick in 2018 but played through a hand/wrist injury in 2019 that sapped him of his power and made him appear to be a bust. He got healthy and looked like his old self at the Reds’ alternate site last year, however. Rogers, meanwhile, was the 13th overall pick in 2017 but struggled in the low minors with his lack of an effective breaking ball, so he went out this past offseason and found himself a slider — a legitimate out pitch right where he needed one. Both look like they’ll make a bunch of All-Star teams going forward, too.
There is a plethora of candidates for the third spot, all clustered around 2 WAR — Carlson, Tyler Stephenson, Ke’Bryan Hayes (who generated 1.9 dWAR in just 95 games), Edmundo Sosa, Jazz Chisholm, even Patrick Wisdom. You could throw a vote to Frank Schwindel too, but he’s 29 and having a wild fluke season, so that wouldn’t make my ballot.
(Photo of Zach Wheeler: Rich Schultz / Getty Images)
