From the staff at MLB.com:
Judge, the rare batting champ with 50-plus home runs, received 17 first-place votes to Raleigh’s 13 (355 to 335 in the overall tally) to win his second straight AL MVP and third in the last four years.
This is the first time in the history of the award that both MVPs from one season repeated the next.
So the vote made it more clear than ever that this is the era of Ohtani and Judge, who in different ways have placed their names among the greatest to ever play the game.
Congrats to Aaron Judge on winning the MVP (it took almost an HOUR to finally announce it, which is insane).
It all came down to how much of a positional adjustment you think being a catcher deserves. Both fWAR and bWAR DO do positional adjustments, and both of them had Cal Raleigh still well behind Judge WITH the positional adjustment factored in. However, it is noteworthy that bWAR and fWAR DIFFERED with each other over how close Judge and Raleigh were.
Therefore, obviously, you could say that they were BOTH wrong, and that the positional adjustment should be even greater, and that Raleigh still deserved it. I disagree, but I get the argument.
In any event, congrats again to Judge on his third MVP.
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And if if weren’t for Cheatin’ Altuve and the Cheatin’ Astros, Judge might just have four MVP’s and a championship ring. And Shohei’s words might not sting so much:
Too close
PLAYER 1 2 3 TOT
Aaron Judge 17 13 — 355
Cal Raleigh 13 17 — 335
Jose Ramirez — — 19 224
Bobby Witt Jr. — — 9 215
Tarik Skubal — — 1 139
Congrats to Cody Bellinger on his 7-point, 3-vote, 14th-place AL MVP finish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OpCFu9qw1A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbnS6K4rTX4
God, those are soooooooooooo bad.
THE dumbest part was how Vlad Jr. was a “stat-padder” in one of the videos, and then the anti-stat-padder in the other video.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of MVPs.
Touche!
Jomboy, making sense, suggests a trade for Kwan: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Qz6km3mylxw