Season-Ending Injury Or Not, Christian Yelich Is Still The Most Valuable Player In The National League
It’s kind of the same in regards to the Hall of Fame, but baseball is arguably the only sport where fans and media care THIS much about the MVP award. It’s a big deal. It’s a pretty big deal in other leagues too, but it’s the biggest deal in Major League Baseball.
However, in recent years — and this is something I’ve written about in the past — it’s become the WAR award. Basically, whoever leads the league in wins above replacement, boom. You’re the MVP. I don’t like that. There’s more to the game than just one stat. Back in the day, it was more along the lines of, who hit the most homers and had the most RBI? Did he hit .300 this year? Okay, cool. Is he on a playoff team? Bang, MVP.
I like that we’ve gotten away from the whole player on a playoff team aspect of evaluating who should win the award. I don’t see how a player’s teammates’ performance should make or break an individual award, although I will allow that performing at a high level in a pennant race is far more impressive than someone who’s cranking homers in front of 45 fans in Miami for a last place team. Not a knock on Giancarlo Stanton, per se. He deserved the MVP in 2017. But it’s more than fair to use the playoff team factor as somewhat of a tie-breaker. But when you have other stats to go off of, ones that only one player is responsible for, then use those.
Now we’ve got an interesting case on our hands here in 2019. Mike Trout’s season ended in the first week of September, and Christian Yelich’s season ended halfway through the second week of September. Trout should win the award in the American League, but Alex Bregman has a really, really interesting case. I’ll break that one down separately with integrity.
Yelich still finished the season with 580 plate appearances, enough to qualify for his second straight batting title. If you qualify, then that should really be the end of the argument for those who want to preach about games played. In addition to leading the league in batting average (.326), Yelich also leads the league in on-base percentage (.429), leads the majors in slugging percentage (.671), and leads the majors with a 1.100 OPS. His 179 OPS+, which is ballpark adjusted, also leads the National League.
Beyond that, Yelich leads the National League in wRC+ (174). When you get into stats like weighted runs created-plus, that’s where you start to lose some of the casual fans, but it’s the number one stat that I’ll look at to evaluate a player’s overall offensive contributions. There was nobody better than Yelich in the NL this year. For the voters who weigh wins above replacement the heaviest, then Yelich leads the NL (7.8 fWAR) in that, too. It’s a cumulative stat, so it’s even more impressive that he leads in fWAR regardless of having played fewer games than guys like Cody Bellinger and Anthony Rendon, who will likely round out the top three for the award.
Defense matters, no doubt, but there’s really yet to be a stat that measures it all that well. Defensive runs saved is probably the only one that I’ll look at, but even DRS has yet to work all the kinks out. Wins above replacement will factor in offense, defense and base running, so that’s good enough for me as far as defense goes. Yelich is number one there.
You keep going down the line and Yelich leads the league in isolated power (.342), tied with Pete Alonso in home runs per plate appearance (7.6%), at-bats per home run (11.11), and he leads the majors in weighted on-base average (.444). And even just his counting stats — his 44 homers still held up for fourth most in the National League, his 30 stolen bases held up for third most, and his 328 total bases were tied with Freddie Freeman for seventh most.
You wanna talk clutch stats? Yelich led the National League with a 1.155 OPS with runners in scoring position. You wanna talk pitch difficulty? Yelich’s 1.667 OPS was third in the majors when he saw a fastball at 98 MPH or harder. For comparison’s sake, Bellinger had a .307 OPS all year when he saw a fastball at 98 MPH or harder.
Gun to my head, I think the voters get it right and vote Yelich as back-to-back National League MVP. His Brewers made the playoffs and simply would not have gotten there without him. The only knock that voters could possibly have against him is that he “only” played in 130 games, but when you lead the league in just about every major statistical category, then I think that only accentuates just how good he was once again in 2019, being that he did all of this without the benefit of the extra 30-ish games. He’s your National League MVP. Again.
He’s also our guest on the most recent episode of Starting 9, and we talk about his injury, his 2019 season, the MVP award, and a bunch of other things. Check that out by clicking here.