What is the MVP Award in Baseball? Definition and Examples
The Most Valuable Player Award is given annually to the best player in each MLB league, voted on by Baseball Writers' Association of America members after the regular season.
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What is the MVP Award?
The Most Valuable Player Award is MLB's top individual honor, given once per season in each league — one American League MVP and one National League MVP. The modern award has been voted on by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) since 1931. Thirty voters (two per MLB city per league) each submit a ranked 10-player ballot after the regular season ends and before the playoffs begin, so postseason performance never counts.
How the Winner Is Decided
Voters rank ten players. Points are awarded by ballot position:
- 1st place: 14 points
- 2nd: 9
- 3rd: 8
- 4th: 7
- 5th: 6
- 6th: 5
- 7th: 4
- 8th: 3
- 9th: 2
- 10th: 1
The highest point total wins. The ballot instructions famously tell voters to consider "strength of offense and defense" and note that a player need not come from a playoff team — but the word "valuable" is deliberately undefined, which is why MVP debates never die. Modern voters lean heavily on WAR, wRC+, and defensive metrics like OAA alongside traditional counting stats.
Worked Example
Shohei Ohtani's 2024 NL MVP was unanimous: all 30 first-place votes, 420 points. He hit .310 with 54 home runs, 130 RBI, 59 stolen bases, and a 181 wRC+ as a full-time DH — the first 50-50 season in history. In 2022, Aaron Judge won the AL award with 28 of 30 first-place votes after hitting 62 home runs with a 211 wRC+, beating Ohtani's two-way season. Barry Bonds holds the record with seven MVP awards; no one else has more than three.
Why It Matters
MVP status defines careers and contracts. MVP votes appear on Hall of Fame resumes, trigger award bonuses written into contracts (often $500K–$1M for a win), and anchor arbitration and free-agency cases. For fans and analysts, MVP voting history is the fastest way to identify a season's true elite tier. In card collecting, MVP seasons are the single biggest driver of a player's card value spike.
Limitations and Misconceptions
- "Valuable" vs. "best": voters historically penalized players on losing teams (Mike Trout's 2016 and 2017 second-place finishes), though this bias has faded.
- Pitchers are eligible but rarely win — only Justin Verlander (2011) and Clayton Kershaw (2014) have won since 1992, because voters reserve pitching excellence for the Cy Young Award.
- Voting happens before the playoffs, so a World Series heroics run cannot influence the result.
- Unanimous wins are rare: Ohtani's 2021 and 2024, Judge's near-miss in 2022.
In Legends Deck: MVP seasons are flagged on player cards and feed the peak-season rating formula — a card built from an MVP campaign carries boosted overall ratings and higher simulation performance ceilings.