We’re not quite to the halfway mark of the season — that would be June 28 — but we’re close. Close enough, certainly, that it’s time to check in on the Most Valuable Player races in the American and National Leagues.
My rankings, as always, are determined by overall base value. Let me reiterate that a positive score for OBV tells us one of two things:
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A particular batter reached more bases than the average big leaguer would have attained under identical circumstances.
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A given pitcher surrendered fewer bases than his typical counterpart would have yielded under the same conditions.
Center fielder Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees has overcome an early slump to run away with the American League’s MVP race. He reached 249 bases in the first 12 weeks of the season, while making only 198 outs. The typical batter would have attained only 131 bases under the same circumstances, giving Judge an OBV of plus-118, easily the best in the AL (and indeed in the majors).
Designated hitter Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers has moved into first place by a comfortable margin in the NL. His BV was plus-92 as of the morning of June 20.
Here are the top 10s for both leagues:
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1. Aaron Judge, Yankees, OBV 118
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2. Juan Soto, Yankees, OBV 95
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3. Gunnar Henderson, Orioles, OBV 85
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4. Kyle Tucker, Astros, OBV 74
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5. Bobby Witt Jr., Royals, OBV 71
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6. Tanner Houck, Red Sox, OBV 65
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7. Steven Kwan, Guardians, OBV 48
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8. Rafael Devers, Red Sox, OBV 47
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8. Jarren Duran, Red Sox, OBV 47
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8. Jose Ramirez, Guardians, OBV 47
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1. Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers, OBV 92
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2. Marcell Ozuna, Braves, OBV 70
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3. Freddie Freeman, Dodgers, OBV 61
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4. Mookie Betts, Dodgers, OBV 60
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4. Bryce Harper, Phillies, OBV 60
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6. Ranger Suarez, Phillies, OBV 55
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7. Jurickson Profar, Padres, OBV 52
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8. Max Fried, Braves, OBV 51
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9. Elly De La Cruz, Reds, OBV 50
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9. Kyle Schwarber, Phillies, OBV 50
There is no Least Valuable Player Award, of course, and thank goodness for that. But it’s still interesting to focus on the tailenders in the base-value standings, the batters and pitchers whose BVs are the farthest underwater.
I’ll mercifully restrict the following lists to the five players with the worst stats in both leagues. Shortstop Javier Baez of the Detroit Tigers has the poorest BV in the AL, falling 47 bases below average. Pitcher Patrick Corbin of the Washington Nationals is the worst in the NL at minus-56.
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1. Javier Baez, Tigers, OBV -47
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2. Martin Maldonado, White Sox, OBV -46
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3. Jose Abreu, Astros, OBV -40
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3. Jose Suarez, Angels, OBV -40
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5. Michael Soroka, White Sox, OBV -39
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1. Patrick Corbin, Nationals, OBV -56
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2. Tim Anderson, Marlins, OBV -48
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3. Nick Fortes, Marlins, OBV -42
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4. Randy Vasquez, Padres, OBV -40
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5. Trevor Rogers, Marlins, OBV -39
Where has the offense gone?
The collective batting average for big-league players stood at an anemic .241 as we reached the 12-week mark of the current season.
That’s seven points below last year’s final average of .248, and it’s on track to be the worst since 1968, the infamous Year of the Pitcher, when the collective average bottomed out at .237.
You can see the decline on the following graph, which plots major-league batting averages at 10-year intervals since 1954. The peak on the graph is .270 in 1994. (The actual high for any season, not just those ending in four, was .271 in 1999.) The current average is roughly 30 points lower, a warning sign for those who thought that the 2023 ban on defensive shifts would singlehandedly solve baseball’s offensive drought.
Anybody have other ideas?
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I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the 20-game winner is an endangered species. Only three pitchers have attained 20 victories since 2021. That’s just one per year.
We all know, of course, that the threshold was more frequently reached in previous decades, so today’s quiz puts your knowledge of 20-game winners to the test. Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter for the answers.
1. Which pitcher accumulated the most 20-win seasons in baseball history?
2. Let’s reduce the timeframe to cover only the so-called Live Ball Era, running from 1920 to the present. Who had the most 20-win seasons in that period?
3. The Modern Era, sometimes called the Expansion Era, began in 1961 and continues today. Who reached 20 wins the most times in that span?
4. One final reduction shrinks the study period to the 21st century. What’s the largest number of 20-win performances by a single pitcher since 2000?
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A. Five
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B. Four
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C. Three
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D. Two
5. Let’s flip the switch for the last question. Which pitcher suffered the most 20-loss seasons in the Live Ball Era?
We already knew that Luis Arraez was a great hitter. His consecutive batting titles (2022 in the American League, 2023 in the National) proved that.
Arraez is hot again in 2024. The San Diego Padres infielder was in the thick of the NL’s batting race with a .319 average at the season’s 12-week mark, the morning of June 20.
And here’s additional proof. Arraez has already had five games in 2024 that featured at least four hits. The first was for the Marlins on April 7, and the other four occurred after Miami traded him to the Padres.
Nobody else in the majors has had as many games with four or more hits. And only three batters besides Arraez have turned the trick on three occasions. Here’s the complete list from Baseball Reference:
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1. Luis Arraez, Marlins-Padres, 5 games with 4+ hits
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2. Will Smith, Dodgers, 4 games
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3. Mookie Betts, Dodgers, 3 games
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3. Francisco Lindor, Mets, 3 games
The 1984 Detroit Tigers — hailed as the greatest team of baseball’s Modern Era (covering all seasons from 1961 to the present) — rolled through two more series 40 years ago this week.
The Tigers won five of seven contests between June 18 and June 24, 1984. They started with two victories in three games against the New York Yankees, then took three of four from the Milwaukee Brewers.
The most dramatic game of the week was the June 20 matchup with the Yankees. The Tigers fell behind 4-2, but rallied to force extra innings. Third baseman Howard Johnson broke a 6-6 deadlock with a three-run walk-off homer in the bottom of the 13th.
The 7-1 victory over Milwaukee on June 24 was the 100th win of pitcher Jack Morris’s Hall of Fame career. He was 12-3 for the year.
The Tigers awoke the next morning with a 52-18 record — and an 8.5-game lead over Toronto in the American League East.
The New York Mets would finish the 1962 season with 120 losses, the most defeats suffered by any Modern Era club.
Four of those defeats occurred 62 years ago during the week of June 18-24, 1962. But, more importantly, the Mets also recorded an unusually high weekly total of three wins.
The worst loss during the seven-day span was a 16-3 pounding on June 22 at the hands of the Houston Colt .45s. But the Mets rebounded the next day to thrash Houston, 13-2. Right fielder Richie Ashburn, a future Hall of Famer, sparked the win with a pair of home runs.
The Mets remained in last place in the National League on the morning of June 25 with a 19-48 record, despite their relatively successful week. They trailed the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers by 25.5 games.
1-D. (Young is the career leader with 511 wins, so it stands to reason that he also tops this category. He racked up 16 seasons of 20 or more victories between 1891 and 1908.)
2-D. (Spahn easily leads this category, reaching 20 wins in 13 different years from 1947 to 1963. Grove and Palmer are the Live Ball Era’s runners-up with eight seasons of 20-plus victories apiece.)
3-D. (Palmer takes the crown with his eight 20-win performances, which he efficiently accumulated in just nine seasons from 1970 to 1978.)
4-C. (Roy Halladay and Curt Schilling both hit 20 wins in three different seasons since the turn of the century. Eight pitchers reached the standard two times apiece.)
5-B. (Newsom was the only pitcher to lose at least 20 games three times since 1920. And he did it for three separate teams: the St. Louis Browns in 1934, the Detroit Tigers in 1941, and the Philadelphia Athletics in 1945.)
