The MVP Debate
Morning Dose: Thursday, November 21
☀️ Good Morning:
After a busy few days, it was relatively quiet on Wednesday.
We are in Awards season, with the AL and NL Cy Young winners announced on Wednesday.
Tonight, we will learn whether voters agree with Mets fans that Francisco Lindor is the National League MVP over Shohei Ohtani.
Since that probably won’t happen, I figured I would spend this morning explaining why Ohtani should in fact win the Award, using this debate to provide fans with a better understanding of WAR (Wins Above Replacement).
☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!
After Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal took home the Cy Young Awards, the MVP winners will be announced at 6:00 PM ET on Thursday.
🤔 WHY NOT LINDOR?
In any other season, Francisco Lindor — who won his fourth Silver Slugger Award, played Gold-Glove-caliber defense, tied Carlos Beltrán for the third best season in Mets history by WAR, while leading a counted-out bunch to the NLCS — would have an inside track towards securing the NL MVP.
Not this year. Not with Shohei Ohtani coming off the first 50–50 season in major-league history. But is Ohtani the right pick?
🗣️ There are two arguments you can make for an MVP candidate, and I will call them “feel” based and “stats” based.
❶ Let’s start with the feel-based argument.
My personal test in thinking about the MVP Award is to try to take myself out of the moment as much as possible. In other words, if you forget about any team allegiances or modern-day arguments, and transported yourself 30 years into the future, when baseball games are probably played on Mars, and if you asked yourself then who was the most valuable player you can remember from the 2024 season, I think the answer would be Shohei Ohtani.
You could tell me that answer would come easier than Francisco Lindor because of the added media attention Ohtani gets. That’s fine. I still think Ohtani’s unique offensive season is the one baseball fans will remember forever in time. It’s a simple way of thinking about MVP, but it’s one way of looking at it.
❷ Now, let’s get into the stat-based argument.
I thought it would be useful to dive into the particulars of WAR to show how Ohtani’s 2024 season resulted in a higher value than Lindor’s, considering offense, defense and baserunning. For the purposes of this exercise, I will use the FanGraphs version of WAR.
🔌 OFFENSE: As hard as it is to believe, for as much extra value Lindor provides on defense, Ohtani technically provided on offense, at least according to WAR. Ohtani’s 70.9 batting runs dwarfs the 30.8 produced for Lindor. That 40.1 run difference is what offsets the 34.6 run advantage Lindor had on defense.
How is that possible? WAR uses weighted on-base average (wOBA) to calculate the offensive value (batting runs) of a player. wOBA takes into account that not all offensive events are created equal: a double is obviously worth more than a walk, but not quite twice as much, as slugging percentage would suggest. Sabermetrics guru Tom Tango created wOBA to try to measure offensive production in terms of runs.
Ohtani’s .431 wOBA was 68 points higher than Lindor’s at .363.
To put that in perspective, Lindor ranked 10th in the National League in wOBA. If you shave 68 points off his rate, you would land between Bryson Stott and Brice Turang, the players ranked 63rd and 64th in wOBA, respectively.
In other words, Ohtani’s offensive production was so out-worldly this season that the difference between his wOBA and Lindor’s is the same as the difference between Lindor’s and two below-average hitters in the National League.
🏃 BASERUNNING: Lindor came one steal short of finishing in the 30-30 club. His 29 stolen bases ranked 10th in the National League. An impressive number for a player who was so valuable in every other aspect of the game.
But again, Ohtani’s numbers were off the charts. His 59 steals were more than twice as many than Lindor. While Lindor’s ability to take extra bases on balls in play, independent of steals, was on par with Ohtani, the gap in steals is massive.
Put Ohtani’s offensive production and baserunning values together, and you can see why there is a significant difference on the offensive side of the equation.
⚾️ FIELDING: The MVP race would be no contest if we only considered offensive numbers. But most baseball players are required to play defense. Lindor didn’t only play defense, while Ohtani rested and studied pitchers on an iPad between at-bats in the dugout, he played at the game’s most difficult position, shortstop, and excelled.
WAR was recently updated by FanGraphs to include Statcast’s Fielding Runs Value, which converts Statcast’s individual defensive metrics into a run-based scale. For shortstop, the key metric being Outs Above Average (OAA).
Lindor’s +16 OAA were the second highest of any shortstop, behind only Dansby Swanson, and sixth-best in all of baseball. His 17.4 defensive WAR value was third-best in the National League, behind catcher Patrick Bailey and Swanson.
🔻 BOTTOM LINE: Put it all together, and Ohtani’s 2024 WAR value is 1.3 wins higher than Lindor’s. You can see each of the components we discussed above in the table below. If you sum the first six columns and divide by “Runs per win”, you get each player’s WAR.
In the end, it’s not that Lindor’s defensive value is overlooked by WAR, it is precisely because of his defensive value that he is even comparable to a player coming off an historic offensive season. If we turned Lindor into a DH, and used all of the same offensive and baserunning numbers, his WAR would drop to 4.2, less than 50% of Ohtani’s value. Lindor’s defensive prowess, along with the fact he plays a premium position relative to DH (reflected in “Positional Adjustment” in the table above), adds 3.6 wins to his WAR value.
Of course, MVP isn’t awarded to the player with the highest WAR. But hopefully this exercise helps explain why Ohtani’s value, based on WAR, still exceeds Lindor’s, despite the positional difference.
Francisco Lindor helped turn a disastrous Mets season into one of the most memorable in franchise history. He deserves every accolade he gets. But Ohtani deserves to be the MVP. While it is easy to discount his value on a stacked team like the Dodgers, let’s not forget the injuries they suffered throughout the season. We saw the impact to their rotation in the playoffs. The constant presence, the engine that kept the Dodgers a powerhouse, was Ohtani.
🎧 Mets Fix Podcast
Make sure you’re subscribed to the Mets Fix Podcast on your favorite platform (Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud).
◾️ Rob Manfred expects Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki to be signed in the next international signing period that begins on January 15.
🔗 The case for each of this year's MVP Award finalists, via MLB: “Along the way, Lindor further established himself as a leader, most notably calling the players-only meeting that his teammates credited for their dramatic turnaround and run up the standings. Lindor was a massive part of that, shaking off an early slump to hit .309/.377/.566 from May 21 through the end of the season. He didn’t bash 54 home runs or steal 59 bases like his chief MVP rival, but Lindor accomplished a few things that even Ohtani couldn’t.”
Thanks for reading! Follow us on X for regular updates until our next newsletter.
And please check out our newsletters about the Knicks and Isles, too.
I get all this and totally understand Ohtani is a great player and will go down as one of all time greats. As others mentioned dodgers were talented team even if you take him out they would most likely get into playoffs. Who knows his boost in offense was aided by resting and not playing field which you can’t possibly know how much factor that was and quantify.
Lindor was our leader played the one of mosf demanding positions in baseball without him Mets are the Marlins or Nats. Remember 1988 MVP strawberry has the stats obviously not Ohtani level but Gibson won MVP for his leadership he provided dodgers. I think Lindor should be mvp for all those reasons. Just my ou
59 stolen bases! Wow! Oven mitts, bigger bases, limited throws to 1st? Maury Wills, Lou Brock and Ricky Henderson would be on 2nd with every hit or walk.