National Post ePaper

Mr. MVP

Yes, Guerrero Jr. is having a great season, but what Ohtani is doing separates himself from all the contenders

SCOTT STINSON sstinson@postmedia.com

I cared far too much about the American League MVP race in 1987. It was, as a teenage fan of the Toronto Blue Jays, all we had left.

That was the season of the Jays' most heartbreaking collapse, seven straight losses that took them out of the AL East lead. George Bell's bat went dead cold over that final stretch, with just three hits and one RBI over those seven losses. Being 14 years old, I recall thinking that this proved he was the MVP: If your best hitter stinks over a week and you lose all the games, doesn't that just prove his value?

I don't imagine this was the argument used by many of the voters that year, but Bell did win the award for a season in which he led the league with 134 RBI and clubbed 47 homers, many of them on pitches that were hilariously out of the strike zone. It was a consolation prize of sorts for a Jays fan still drying his tears. Justice was served!

Justice was not served. Under the cold light of statistical evaluation methods that only became widely used years later, Bell's still-pretty-great 1987 season has lost a bit of its shine. By Wins Above Replacement, he wasn't even the most valuable Blue Jay, with 5.0 WAR, according to Baseball Reference, against the 7.4 posted by Jimmy Key and the 5.1 from Tony Fernandez. Bell was 10th in positionplayer WAR, well back of Wade Boggs (8.3) and Alan Trammell (8.2). Trammell, whose Tigers made the playoffs, finished second in the MVP voting to Bell.

Which brings us, in a (very) roundabout way, to the 2021 MVP Award. Once again, a Blue Jay having a remarkable season is one of the favourites. But also again, he should not win it.

A pause here to note that this is not intended as criticism of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. He is having an unbelievable year with the bat, delivering on all the promise and then some that he showed in the minors before scuffling a bit in his first couple of seasons in the big leagues. I'm not even nitpicking on his defence here, even though it's lacking. Guerrero is unquestionably having the most dynamic offensive season in a lineup full of guys having them; he would clearly be the team's choice for MVP. Young Vladito just hammers baseballs, and not just the ones that clear fences. He powders the doubles and even some of the singles, and manages to combine that elite ability to put the bat on the ball at a high rate of speed with excellent patience at the plate. It is something.

But Shohei Ohtani is something else entirely. Though the Los Angeles Angels star has cooled noticeably in the second half of the season, he is still both a very good hitter and a very good starting pitcher. This simply hasn't been done since the days when baseball players worry baggy cotton uniforms and worked their farms in the off-season. His offensive numbers aren't as gaudy as Guerrero's other than their similar home-run totals, and he hasn't been as consistently dominant as a starting pitcher than, say, Robbie Ray, but even making these kinds of comparisons is bananas. Ohtani has an offensive WAR of 4.5 so far, which sharp-eyed readers will note is not that far off George Bell's 1987 number. As a pitcher, he's at 3.7, nowhere near the league leaders — Ray is at 6.8 — but still in the top 10. Hyu-Jin Ryu's WAR for 2021: 1.9. How could a player be more valuable than one who is literally doing the job of two people on a major-league roster, and doing them both at an all-star level? It's not quite Connor McDavid also being the best goalie on his roster — there's a bigger gap between McDavid and his peers than there is between Ohtani and his — but it's more like Mitch Marner also being a world-class netminder every fifth game. It's bonkers.

Two things hurt Ohtani's case: One, his team is not good. The Angels are out of the playoff race, and have been for most of the year, so his games haven't been as meaningful as those of Guerrero. The novelty of what he is doing has also worn off a little. He had a big lead in the home run race at one point, courtesy of all those towering moon shots, but the pack has caught up to him now. And while he's generally been great as a starting pitcher, he's missed just enough turns through the rotation to have no shot at a Cy Young candidacy.

But, OK, so he might not win the home run crown or merit Cy Young votes. He's still doing both things incredibly well, considering that he's doing both things. It is fair to say that there was plenty of skepticism that he could be an everyday hitter and regular pitcher when he arrived in the major leagues in 2018, and through three seasons the doubters were winning the day. He had stretches of brilliance, but also injury troubles, and it certainly seemed possible that trying to be a dual threat was to blame for those problems. But he has been healthy for 2021, and it turns out that a Shohei Ohtani who plays a full season is one of the most remarkable athletes on the planet.

We might be used to it now, but that doesn't make it any less extraordinary.

This simply hasn't been done since the days when baseball players worry baggy cotton uniforms and worked their farms in the off-season.

SPORTS | BASEBALL

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2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

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