Red Sox Mookie Betts, Angels Mike Trout on track for greatest MVP race

Full disclaimer: the following criteria will be completely arbitrary. This is not meant to be a perfect measuring stick, but just an article that sheds some light on how great these two players have been thus far.

The Red Sox and the Angels have both played 55 games so we will scale both players’ counting numbers by a factor of 162/55 (or about 2.95). First, we want to make sure this is a race, so we will start with the criteria that both of the top two MVP finalists amassed 8.0 bWAR; this eliminates years of one super dominant player carrying the weight. For simplicity, we will not consider years where a pitcher finished in the top two in MVP voting. Finally, for each year that makes the cut, we will average the rate stats (weighted by plate-appearances) and add the counting stats of the top two MVP finalists.

The stats considered will be bWAR, fWAR, Home Runs, Stolen Bases, wRC+, Def, Batting Average, On-Base Percentage, and Slugging Percentage.

Rank in a category is relative only to the 14 MVP races that met the criteria above for consideration. Because this is completely arbitrary anyway we will borrow the point system from the greatest game of all time: Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

First in a category: 10 points

Second in a category: 8 points

Third in a category: 6 points

Fourth in a category: 4 points

Fifth in a category: 3 points

Sixth in a category: 2 points

Seventh in a category: 1 point

And because WAR is an all-encompassing stat, bWAR and fWAR will count double. Sound like a flawless, definitive, and not at all convoluted system to rank MVP races, right? Well too late, I already wrote this whole article.

Presenting the five best MVP races in baseball history according to my new made up metric.