Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams deserved more MVP Awards
Boston Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams won two MVP awards in his career but the Hall of Famer deserved to win more than that.
Ted Williams was the greatest hitter who ever lived and he’d be the first to tell you so. He complied a resume of prolific accomplishments during his 19-year career with the Boston Red Sox but didn’t have the hardware to match the production. Williams won the American League MVP Award twice but there were multiple years when he was robbed.
The period that Williams played in was vastly different from today’s game. MLB was split into the two leagues we still have today but there were no divisions or Wild Cards. The top team in each league would earn a trip to the World Series. MVP voters tend to favor players from playoff teams and the Red Sox only made the postseason once during Teddy Ballgame’s career. Under today’s playoff structure, Williams would have had more opportunities to shine on the October stage.
His team falling short in the standings cost him some votes for an individual award. It’s fair to hold it against a productive player on a bad team since they play in fewer meaningful games. That was the case for Williams on some of the disappointing teams he played on in the 1950s.
However, there were many times in his career when the Red Sox were in the hunt that Williams deserved the MVP based on his superior production only for him to have the honor stolen by a player on a better team.
Robbed by Yankees
The first such atrocity was in 1941 when Williams finished as the runner-up to Joe DiMaggio. A glance at their statistical output from that season shows a clear winner and it’s not the guy who wore pinstripes.
Williams: .406/.553/.735/1.287, 37 HR, 120 RBI, 135 R, 10.4 WAR
DiMaggio: .357/.440/.643/1.083, 30 HR, 125 RBI, 122 R, 9.4 WAR
Williams is the last major league player to hit over .400 for a season and he didn’t even win the MVP that year. He led the league in AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS, home runs, walks and runs scored, giving him a decisive advantage in every category aside from DiMaggio’s slight edge in RBI.
This was the year of DiMaggio’s record 56-game hitting streak so that narrative carried him further than a .400 batting average, which had been done several times before in previous decades.
DiMaggio also benefited by playing for a 101-win Yankees team that cruised to the AL pennant. New York finished 17 games ahead of the second-place Red Sox that year. It’s not as if Williams was padding his stats for a bad team though. He clearly had the better season but the voters gave it to the best player on the best team instead of the one with the best production.
The following year was a repeat of the same story only it was a different Yankee winning the award in the sequel. Joe Gordon took home the MVP in 1942 while Williams again settled for second place. The gap between the two was even more mind-boggling this time.
Williams: .356/.499/.648/1.147, 36 HR, 137 RBI, 141 R, 10.4 WAR
Gordon: .322/.409/.491/.900, 18 HR, 103 RBI, 88 R, 7.8 WAR
Williams won the Triple Crown but that still wasn’t enough to earn the MVP. He also led the league in each of the other slash line categories plus walks, runs scored, and total bases.
DiMaggio had a bit of an off year by his incredible standards, producing a 6.4 WAR that was his lowest at the time since his rookie campaign. He finished a distant seventh on the MVP ballot but the voters felt compelled to award someone from a 103-win Yankees team. Gordon didn’t have an MVP-caliber season but he stole the award anyway. Williams was the runner-up simply because his Red Sox only won 93 games to settle for second place.
Returning from War
The next three years of his career were wiped out when Williams left baseball to serve his country during World War II. He returned in 1946 to finally capture his first MVP. Williams didn’t hit .400 or win another Triple Crown that year but he did lead the Red Sox to the pennant for the only time in his career and that’s what mattered most to the voters.
His 10.6 WAR that year would end up being the highest that Williams would produce in any season so the award was well earned. Putting up arguably the best season of his career after a three-year hiatus makes the achievement even more uncanny.
In 1947, DiMaggio was back to steal the spotlight. Only this time he didn’t have a record-breaking hitting streak to fuel his campaign and his production wasn’t even close to what Williams provided.
Williams: .343/.499/.634/1.133, 32 HR, 114 RBI, 125 R, 9.5 WAR
DiMaggio: .315/.391/.522/.913, 20 HR, 97 RBI, 97 R, 4.6 WAR
For the second time in his career, Williams won the Triple Crown but had to settle for second place in the MVP race. Williams had massive lead in every category and more than doubled DiMaggio’s WAR. Obviously, voters didn’t know what WAR was back in those days so it wasn’t a factor but it goes to show how ridiculous this ballot was in retrospect.
The Red Sox dropped to third place that year, two games behind the Detroit Tigers and 16 behind the 97-win Yankees. Boston wasn’t close to returning to the World Series but they still had a winning record. This was another clear case of the pennant deciding the MVP race.
Heartbreak redeemed by hardware
1948 saw Williams win his second straight batting title. He also led the league in all the slash line categories plus walks and doubles. This time though, he did not deserve the MVP. See, I can be objective!
Williams finished third that year while appearing in only 137 games, his lowest in his career to that point. His counting stats took a hit due to the missed time while DiMaggio led the league with 39 homers and 155 RBI. Wait, the Yankee Clipper didn’t win either.
Cleveland’s Lou Boudreau won the MVP in ’48. The Indians beat the Red Sox on the final day of the season to win the pennant by one game. Boudreau hit .355 with a league-leading 10.3 WAR, well ahead of the 8.4 WAR Williams produced. He deserved the award regardless of if his team made the playoffs but based on precedent, had that final game swung the other way, sending Boston to the World Series, Williams probably would have won the MVP.
Williams earned his second MVP award in 1949 when he led the league with a career-high 43 home runs and 159 RBI. He won in a landslide despite that the Yankees finished a game ahead of the Red Sox to win the pennant. It was another heart-breaker for Boston that ended with consecutive losses in New York to choke away the pennant.
At least the voters didn’t blindly hand the MVP to someone from the team with the best record, so that’s progress! Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto finished a distant second in a season when he hit .275 with five home runs and 3.0 WAR. It would have been a complete joke to give him the award based on the outcome of the final game of the regular season.
1950s to the end
The 1950s weren’t kind to the Red Sox, hindering Williams’ chances for another MVP. The superstar outfielder broke his elbow making a catch against the wall in the 1950 All-Star Game, limiting him to 89 games. Two years later he left to serve in the Korean War and missed the bulk of the 1952 and ’53 seasons.
By the time he returned from the war for a full season, Williams was 35 years old and no longer capable of playing every day. He never again played more than 136 games in a season and topped 130 games only twice in his final eight seasons after returning from Korea.
He was still earning MVP votes every year but 1957 was the only season that decade where Williams was a serious candidate. He hit .388 that year and saw his power briefly return with 38 homers, marking the first time since his elbow injury that he hit more than 30 in a season.
Williams finished second on the ballot behind Mickey Mantle that year. It was the fourth time that the Splendid Splinter settled for being the runner-up and each time it was to a Yankee. This time was warranted though.
Williams: .388/.526/.731/1.257, 38 HR, 87 RBI, 96 R, 9.7 WAR
Mantle: .365/.512/.665/1.177, 34 HR, 94 RBI, 121 R, 11.3 WAR
Williams had Mantle beat in the slash line categories but the difference wasn’t as wide as it was in previous instances where he lost the MVP to a Yankees hitter. Mantle played in 12 more games that year, giving him a boost in some of the counting stats and he had a comfortable lead in WAR.
Boston finished 16 games behind the 98-win Yankees but this doesn’t feel like a year where the MVP was gifted to someone from the best team. It was a tight race with Mantle receiving only one more first-place vote than Williams. You can make a case for the ballot going the other way but Mantle was a worthy recipient in an excellent season.
Williams retained his All-Star status in his final three seasons but didn’t finish higher than seventh on the MVP ballot. He retired after the 1960 season at the age of 41, conceding his spot in left field to a youngster named Yaz who would carry on the MVP tradition later that decade.
Winning two MVP awards is a great honor that anyone would be proud of but when the player is as great at Ted Williams you can’t help but wonder why he didn’t win more. His team’s record had a lot to do with it and his prickly attitude with the media members who voted on the award certainly didn’t help.
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Still, based on his production during seasons when the Red Sox were among the top AL teams, Williams was cheated out of at least two MVPs (1942, 1947) and had a strong case in one or two other seasons.