The 1993 AL Cy Young Award went to Jack McDowell of the White Sox, because of his 22 wins matched to a 3.37 ERA and 158 strikeouts and giving up more than a hit per inning. Randy Johnson, with 308 strikeouts (but with a 3.24 ERA) finished second, and Kevin Appier, with a 2.56 ERA, finished third.
Interesting one. Obvious that McDowell got that one based on the wins alone. Appier beats McDowell and Johnson in terms of WHIP (although between Appier and Johnson it’s very close - 1.061 for Appier and 1.112 for Johnson). And has a big edge in wins against a replacement pitcher - 8.4 to 6.1 for Johnson. McDowall had 4.1, which is less than half as much as Appier and actually a distant fourth behind Jimmy Key.
Perhaps all the writers who went to County Stadium that year mistook the “Cooooooooooop!” cheers for “Voooooooooouuuuuck!”. 
Mark McGwire getting beaten out by Sammy Sosa in 1998.
Sosa won out over McGwire that year because the Cubs made it to the post-season and the Cardinals didn’t. Generally, the rule is that the MVP must go to a player on a team that made it to the play-offs or was at least competitive. There are exceptions, like, for example, Andre Dawson in 1987, who was NL MVP even though his team, the Chicago Cubs, finished in the cellar. However, the voters got a lot of flack for that choice.
That “rule” is both fictional and garbage.
The award you’re describing should be called the BPOATWORGP (Best Player On A Team With Other Really Good Players).
As they als odid for giving the AL award to George Bell, whose team was at least pretty close but who was an atrocious pick as opposed to Alan Trammell.
So many MVPs have won while playing on teams that missed the playoffs that I think it’s safe to say the “Rule” that the MVP should be from a winning team is really nothing more than a “Rationalization.” The rule didn’t apply for Cal Ripken’s 1991 MVP or Dawson or Bell or Ernie Banks or Mike Schmidt’s third MVP Award or Alex Rodriguez’s first MVP or Barry Bonds a number of times or Robin Yount’s second MVP or Jeff Burroughs or a number of others.
One could argue from a sabermetric standpoint that a “most valuable player” is the player that adds the most value to the team. By that standard, Wins Above Replacement isn’t really a measure of value on its own.
If we’ve got one player on a 62-100 team who had a WAR of 10, and another player on a 90-72 team with a WAR of 7, some would say that the player on the team in the cellar was more “valuable”. But they’re wrong. As Nate Silver notes in Baseball Between the Numbers, some wins are more valuable than others. Specifically, wins that make your team more likely to make the playoffs are most valuable of all. Let’s look again at Player A (WAR 10, team 62-100) vs. Player B (WAR 7, team 90-72):
Team with Player A: 62-100; without, 52-110. According to Silver’s analysis, each of those 10 wins is “worth” $747,000 to his team. These wins don’t have a lot of value, because none of them brought the team anywhere near the playoffs, nor did they really make the team worth watching either at the park or on TV. Value of Player A to his team: $7.47 million.
Team with Player B: 90-72; without, 83-79. Now each of these wins is worth a LOT to the team. 83 wins give your team about a 5 percent chance of making the playoffs, but 90 wins give your team a 56.5 percent chance. Those 7 wins are valuable in every sense of the word. Silver’s analysis finds that those 7 wins are worth between $1.2 million and $4.4 million apiece, with the 89th win being most valuable of all. Total value of Player B to his team: approximately $19 million.
Summary: MVP can’t be determined by individual stats alone–you need to take into account team performance as well. On individual stats, Player A has a better record, but in terms of value, Player B was far and away the more valuable to his team.
Duke - why are you inserting “to his team” into the equation? Why not “to any team”? I’ve always seen the MVP as the question “if you could replay the season, and pick any one player to be on your team, who would it be?”
Value has to be defined in terms of context-independent wins. When you start talking about the marginal value of wins, you end up crediting inferior players for the strength of their teammates.
The question is not whether a 5 WAR player provides more money for his contending team than a 8 WAR player for a cellar-dweller; that part I agree with. But you shouldn’t define “value” in terms of money, you should define it in terms of wins. To do otherwise punishes the superior player for his inferior teammates.
But isn’t that part of the deal with value, though? Move a player from one team to another and his stats change with park factor, strength of schedule, etc. “Value” is not immediately transferable.
If it was “best player in the league”, sure, I’d buy that. But it’s “most valuable.”
What’s the difference? I think that’s a non-distinction. When the MVP was created, players weren’t allowed to win it more than once in their career. To me, that says “best player in the league”. I don’t understand it when people try to shoehorn team accomplishments into an individual award.
I recall a (possibly apocryphal) story about a player’s contract renegotiation. Great player on a terrible team, back in the 50’s or thereabouts. Club offered him a lowball number and he groused. They replied “We came in last with you, we can come in last without you.”
There’s a certain validity to it, in terms of an individual player’s impact on the overall outcome of the season, players on winning teams have much more impact than those on bad teams. Unfortunately, there’s no strict definition of what the voters are supposed to be considering when voting for MVP, so you get varying definitions of what Valuable means.
Ted Williams was screwed again in 1947.
He won the Quadruple Crown (Triple Crown plus runs scored), but as in 1941 finished second to DiMaggio.
The story has it that Williams would have won had he not been *left entirely off *the ballot by one voter,
a Boston writer who he got along with particularly badly (each voter picked ten players, the 1st choice
getting 10 points, the 2nd choice 9 points, etc). He would have won if that voter had selected him 9th.
How? Nobody can be the “best player in the league” more than once?
The 1995 AL MVP vote was a joke, IMHO. Mo Vaughn of Boston won it over Cleveland’s Albert Belle, just because Belle was an SOB and Vaughn wasn’t.
Name BA HR RBI R OPS
Belle .317-50-126-121-1.091
Vaughn .300-39-126-98-0.963
That sounds like a story Ralph Kiner used to tell. He wanted a hefty raise after hitting 51 homers for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The GM, he claimed, told him “We could have finished last WITHOUT those 51 homers.”
No, just that it makes it sound much more like an individual accomplishment than relying on your team having also done well.