OHTANI IN A LEAGUE OF HIS OWN

Guerrero enjoying a remarkable season, but Angels star is clearly the AL'S MVP

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 that many of the voters that year used, but Bell did win the award for a season in which he led the league with 134 RBIS 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 position player 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 shouldn't win it.

A pause here to note that this is not intended as criticism of Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. He's 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 Vladdy 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's something to see.

But Shohei Ohtani is something else entirely. Though the Los Angeles Angels star has cooled noticeably in the second half of the season, he's still both a very good hitter and a very good starting pitcher. This simply hasn't been done since the days when baseball players wore baggy cotton uniforms and worked their farms in the off-season.