Locking up the MVPs, heating up at the plate, and feasting on homers

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1. BEST: MVP stretch drives

Both races for baseball’s Most Valuable Player Awards have been decided.

Some pundits would have you believe otherwise, pushing Bobby Witt Jr. for the American League’s MVP trophy and Francisco Lindor for the National League’s hardware. Witt and Lindor have enjoyed outstanding years, to be sure, but they’re not going to come out on top in the postseason balloting.

That’s because Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani have the awards in the bag.

The league leaders in overall base value (OBV) swept the MVP honors in 2022 and 2023, and there’s no reason to think that 2024 will be any different.

OBV, you’ll recall, is a stat that applies to both hitters and pitchers. A positive OBV indicates one of two things:

  • A particular batter reached more bases than the average big leaguer would have attained under identical circumstances.

  • A given pitcher surrendered fewer bases than his typical counterpart would have yielded under the same conditions.

Judge amassed the strongest OBV in either league over the first five months of the 2024 season. He reached 472 bases (with singles, doubles, triples, home runs, walks, hit batsmen, stolen bases, and sacrifices) and made 341 outs through the end of August. The typical batter would have attained only 232 bases with the same number of outs. Judge’s total was 240 higher, thereby giving him an OBV of plus-240.

Judge led the AL’s runner-up, New York Yankees teammate Juan Soto, by the enormous margin of 76 bases. The NL’s frontrunner, Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers, held an even larger lead, 83 bases, over Marcell Ozuna of the Atlanta Braves. It’s impossible to imagine a change atop the standings during the final month.

Listed below are the 10 players with the best OBVs in each league:

American League leaders

National League leaders

2. WORST: LVP performances

The races are much tighter for Least Valuable Player recognition, a nonexistent (dis)honor in each league.

Brandon Drury of the Los Angeles Angels and Roddery Munoz of the Miami Marlins had the worst OBVs in their respective leagues at the five-month mark. Drury’s minus-67 is one base worse than the score for Logan Allen of the Cleveland Guardians in the American League. Munoz’s minus-75 is seven bases worse than the mark for former teammate Tim Anderson, who was cut loose by the Marlins in July.

Here are the lowest OBVs in each league:

American League tailenders

  • 1. Brandon Drury, Angels, OBV -67

  • 2. Logan Allen, Guardians, OBV -66

  • 3. Javier Baez, Tigers, OBV -55

  • 4. Lenyn Sosa, White Sox, OBV -52

  • 5. Jonah Heim, Rangers, OBV -50

  • 5. Korey Lee, White Sox, OBV -50

National League tailenders

3. GRAPH: Offensive trends

This hasn’t been a great year for offense. The cumulative batting average for all major leaguers was .244 through the end of August, four points lower than last year’s .248. It’s almost hard to believe that just 25 years ago, in 1999, the collective average was a robust .271.

But, that being said, hitters did warm up as the season progressed. This year’s cumulative ratio of bases per out (BPO) was .679 at the five-month mark. That’s far from an outstanding figure, though it’s a considerable improvement from .664 at the end of April. May, in fact, was even worse with hitters combining for a BPO of .654 for the month.

The subsequent upswing was largely fueled by a hot July, when big-league batters posted a monthly BPO of .703. This week’s graph offers a breakdown of the separate ratios for each month, beginning with the cumulative BPO in red:

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4. QUIZ: Top hitters

Last week’s quiz focused on the four active pitchers who have worked more than 2,200 innings in their careers. This week’s questions apply the same perspective to the four active hitters with the greatest longevity — specifically, the only four who have played in more than 1,900 games since breaking into the big leagues.

All stats covers the listed players’ careers through September 6, 2024. Look to the bottom of this newsletter for the answers.

1. Who among these four veterans has played the most games?

2. Who has the most career hits?

  • A. Freddie Freeman

  • B. Paul Goldschmidt

  • C. Andrew McCutchen

  • D. Carlos Santana

3. Which of these four players has hit the largest number of home runs?

  • A. Freddie Freeman

  • B. Paul Goldschmidt

  • C. Andrew McCutchen

  • D. Carlos Santana

4. Who has drawn the most walks?

  • A. Freddie Freeman

  • B. Paul Goldschmidt

  • C. Andrew McCutchen

  • D. Carlos Santana

5. Who has piled up the most strikeouts?

  • A. Freddie Freeman

  • B. Paul Goldschmidt

  • C. Andrew McCutchen

  • D. Carlos Santana

5. LEADERBOARD: Multi-homer games

If I asked you to name the player who has had the most multi-homer games this season, your response would be obvious.

It has to be Aaron Judge.

The Yankees slugger blasted 51 home runs during the first five months of the 2024 schedule, putting him on track to threaten his own American League record of 62, which he set in 2022. Judge has to be the leader.

Wrong answer.

The actual frontrunner (based on stats up to September 7) is Yordan Alvarez of the Houston Astros, who has blasted duplicate home runs in seven different games this season. Six of those were two-homer affairs, and the seventh featured three over-the-fence shots against the Philadelphia Phillies on August 28.

A total of five players have had at least five multi-homer outings this year, according to Baseball Reference. And yes, Judge is among them:

  • 1. Yordan Alvarez, Astros, 7 multi-homer games

  • 2. Juan Soto, Yankees, 6 multi-homer games

  • 2. Kyle Schwarber, Phillies, 6 multi-homer games

  • 4. Tyler O’Neill, Red Sox, 5 multi-homer games

  • 4. Aaron Judge, Yankees, 5 multi-homer games

6. TRACKING THE BEST: ’84 Tigers

The 1984 Detroit Tigers, who would go into history as the greatest team of baseball’s Modern Era (covering the period from 1961 to the present), were simply playing out the string 40 years ago.

The Tigers entered the week of September 3-9, 1984, with an insurmountable 8.5-game lead in the American League East. And they proceeded to expand it by winning four of six games.

The week’s keystone series was a three-game set (September 7-9) in Toronto against the Blue Jays, Detroit’s closest divisional rival. The Tigers swept all three by the decisive scores of 7-4, 10-4, and 7-2.

If there had been any questions about the race in the AL East, they were erased by the time the Detroiters flew to their next series in Baltimore. The Tigers had a 92-51 record on the morning of September 10, good for a lead of 11.5 games.

7. TRACKING THE WORST: ’62 Mets

All indications suggest that the 1962 New York Mets will soon be surrendering their title as baseball’s losingest team. The 2024 Chicago White Sox are on track to break the Mets’ record of 120 defeats.

But such an occurrence was far in the future when the Mets hit the road to Pittsburgh and Houston during the week of September 3-9, 1962. New York played seven games against the Pirates and the Colt .45s, and it lost six. The seventh ended in a tie that would not be replayed.

Starter Roger Craig was tagged with two of the week’s defeats, running his personal record to 7-23. The overall record for the Mets was 35-109, settling them deep in last place in the National League, 58 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers.

8. QUIZ ANSWERS: Top hitters

1-C. (McCutchen has appeared in 2,112 games since his 2009 debut. Santana is next with 2,061 games.)

2-A. (Freeman is the hit king with a total of 2,251, followed by McCutchen at 2,141.)

3-B. (Goldschmidt tops the group with 361 home runs, edging ahead of Freeman’s 342.)

4-D. (Santana has the sharpest eye at the plate, drawing a career total of 1,268 walks. Second place goes to McCutchen with 1,110.)

5-B. (Goldschmidt has struck out 1,863 times. The runner-up is McCutchen with 1,759.)



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