Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award
Major League Baseball award / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) is an annual Major League Baseball (MLB) award given to one outstanding player in the American League and one in the National League. Since 1931, it has been awarded by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA). Until 2020, the winners received the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award, which became the official name of the award in 1944,[1] in honor of the first MLB commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who served from 1920 until his death on November 25, 1944.[1][2] Starting in 2020, Landis' name no longer appeared on the MVP trophy after the BBWAA received complaints from several former MVP winners about the late Commissioner's role against integration of MLB.[3]
The Most Valuable Player Award given to Hank Aaron in 1957 | |
| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| League | Major League Baseball |
| Awarded for | Regular season most valuable player of American League and National League |
| Country | United States, Canada |
| Presented by | Baseball Writers' Association of America |
| History | |
| First award | 1931 |
| Most recent | Paul Goldschmidt (NL) Aaron Judge (AL) |
MVP voting takes place before the postseason, but the results are not announced until after the World Series. The BBWAA began by polling three writers in each league city in 1938, reducing that number to two per league city in 1961.[4] The BBWAA does not offer a clear-cut definition of what "most valuable" means, instead leaving the judgment to the individual voters.[5][6]
First basemen, with 35 winners, have won the most MVPs among infielders, followed by second basemen (16), third basemen (15), and shortstops (15). Of the 25 pitchers who have won the award, 15 are right-handed while 10 are left-handed. Walter Johnson, Carl Hubbell, and Hal Newhouser are the only pitchers who have won multiple times, with Newhouser winning consecutively in 1944 and 1945.[7][8]
Hank Greenberg, Stan Musial, Alex Rodriguez, and Robin Yount have won at different positions,[7] while Rodriguez is the only player who has won the award with two different teams at two different positions.[9] Rodriguez and Andre Dawson are the only players to win the award while on a last-place team, the 2003 Texas Rangers and 1987 Chicago Cubs, respectively. Barry Bonds has won the most often (seven times) and the most consecutively (four from 2001 to 2004).[10] Jimmie Foxx was the first player to win multiple times[11] – 10 players have won three times, and 19 have won twice.[12] Frank Robinson is the only player to win the award in both the American and National Leagues.
The award's only tie occurred in the National League in 1979, when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell received an equal number of points.[7][13] There have been 19 unanimous winners, who received all the first-place votes.[4] The New York Yankees have the most winning players with 23, followed by the St. Louis Cardinals with 21 winners. The award has never been presented to a member of the following three teams: Arizona Diamondbacks, New York Mets, and Tampa Bay Rays.
In recent decades, pitchers have rarely won the award. When Shohei Ohtani won the AL award in 2021, he became the first pitcher in either league to be named the MVP since Clayton Kershaw in 2014, and the first in the American League since Justin Verlander in 2011. Ohtani also became the first two-way player to win this award.[14] Since the creation of the Cy Young Award in 1956, he is the only pitcher to win an MVP award without winning a Cy Young in the same year (Don Newcombe, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, Willie Hernández, Roger Clemens, Dennis Eckersley, Justin Verlander, and Clayton Kershaw all won a Cy Young award in their MVP seasons).