Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award

History[edit]

Since 1931, a Most Valuable Player Award has been bestowed by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) to a player in the National League and a player in the American League. Before 1931, two similar awards were issued—the League Award was issued during 1922–1928 in the American League and during 1924–1929 in the National League,^[1] and during 1911–1914, the Chalmers Award was issued to a player in each league.^[2] Criteria and a list of winners for these two earlier awards are detailed in below sections.


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.^[3] The BBWAA does not offer a clear-cut definition of what "most valuable" means, instead leaving the judgment to the individual voters.^[4][5]


In 1944, the award was named after Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first Commissioner of Baseball, who served from 1920 until his death on November 25, 1944.^[6][7] Formally named the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award, that naming appeared on a plaque given to winning players.^[8] Starting in 2020, Landis' name no longer appears on the MVP plaque^[9] after the BBWAA received complaints from several former MVP winners about Landis' role against the integration of MLB.^[10][11]


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.^[12][13]


Hank Greenberg, Stan Musial, Alex Rodriguez, and Robin Yount have won at different positions,^[12] while Rodriguez is the only player who has won the award with two different teams at two different positions.^[14] 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).^[15] Jimmie Foxx was the first player to win multiple times^[16] – 10 players have won three times, and 19 have won twice.^[17] 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.^[12][18] There have been 19 unanimous winners, who received all the first-place votes.^[3] 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 the award ^[19] and in 2023, he became the first player in MLB history to win MVP by unanimous vote twice.^[20] 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).


Ironically, there was no award given by either league in 1930, which meant that one of the single greatest performances ever went unheralded when Hack Wilson of the Chicago Cubs set the (still standing) MLB record for RBI with 191. He also batted .356 and set the NL record with 56 HRs, a record which stood for 68 years until Sammy Sosa (66) and Mark McGuire (70) both eclipsed him.