You’re Blind To The Truth If You Think Ohtani Deserves The AL MVP Over Judge
I might get killed for this take but whatever. There should be no debate about the AL MVP if the season ended today. None. Zero. Zilch. I posted this poll just to get a sense of the public conversation right now and turns out I hate the results. More than 50% of the public things the award goes to Ohtani and I don't get it.
Shohei is amazing. The 3rd best something at this. The 5th highest number of that. Top-10 offensively in X, Y and Z. Just a complete threat in all respects at the plate.
Then the pitching. His inning count will never amaze but his ratios and peripherals are simply incredible. Somebody in the business of statistics said he is the near equivalent of Mookie Betts in the lineup and Shane McClanahan on the mound. A perennial MVP candidate mixed with an emerging Cy Young name. It's incredible to think Shohei managed to exceed expectations this year much less in his career given the hype. We've all learned our lesson. You can honestly look at Shohei Ohtani and expect him to get better.
As an example, he witnessed a 100+ mph sinker then turned around and added one for his next start. WHAT.
The legend is growing too big to fail. All of that is because Shohei Ohtani is really fucking good at baseball. The front runner for Most Talented Of All Time. For all intents and purposes, he's the most spectacular and magnificent player on the planet.
That's why I'm comfortable saying that 2022 Ohtani wins almost any MVP award in AL history. Only problem is that 2022 Aaron Judge is on the short list of better years. Luckily they have statistics to help prove my point:
Judge is leading the AL in:
- Runs
- HR's
- RBI's
- Total Basesa
- OBP
- OPS
- wRC+
- fWAR
- bWAR
- ISO (by 40%)
- wOBA
Someone is moaning that he's also 12th in stolen bases with 15 and 5th in batting average at .302. So I'll also make that point but concede he's not the league's best in either category. There's your blind spots.
Meanwhile, the Yankees would objectively be competing for last place without Aaron Judge. And that's not swapping out his 8.4 WAR for 8.4 losses. It's probably significantly more drastic without him and almost everyone with a worthwhile opinion would agree with me.
If Judge isn't dominating every category. If he's playing at career averages and the rest of the Yankees are pulling their weight into September. If the Angels were marginally .500 and if the Yankees were battling for a Wild Card. If all these were true then we're writing and reading a different blog here.
But a simple fact remains and that's the concept of Most Value. By all measurements, soft and hard, across all aspects of the award, it should be Judge's to lose coming down the stretch. 4 weeks left means 4 weeks for this narrative to completely change. Right now though it's Judge 1, Ohtani 2 in a preposterous showdown.
Credit to Ohtani for making this such a debate. But let's not automatically bury the best offensive season since Barry Bonds on the grounds that we simply never see a two-way player like Ohtani. It's definitely the sexy take right now just not at the expense of normalizing Aaron Judge's 2022 season. As crazy as it sounds, the guy deserves more respect.
For those reasons he gets my MVP vote.
More on today's Starting 9 here:
Now tell me why I'm wrong: