You have to feel for Bobby Witt Jr. Yes, he’s young, handsome, will make a couple hundred million dollars in his career, but will need so much help to be the MVP of the league. He ran into an historic Aaron Judge season last year, and has actually been even less lucky in 2025. His 6.8 fWAR would clear baseball as a whole, if not for Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh. Sheesh, at least Lou Gehrig got ONE while the Babe was around…
Yeah, the finalists for the AL MVP are all but set, with the remaining 20ish
games of the season to determine whether Judge is a three-time winner or Big Dumper cements perhaps the finest season a catcher has ever had. To me, it’s not particularly a close race at this point — Judge holds a slight edge in WAR and has been a much more destructive offensive force. Still, we need a narrative, what else are we going to do for the next month?
In the NHL, they essentially have two MVPs. There’s the Hart Trophy, awarded by the writers, and the Ted Lindsey Award, which is voted on by members of the NHLPA, the players themselves. Most of the time, 35 out of 52 times in fact, the same guy wins both trophies in a year — it’s hard for writers OR players to disagree that Wayne Gretzky is pretty good scoring 92 goals.
It’s always interesting when the two awards go to different players though, like what happened this year. Connor Hellebuyck, starting goaltender for the Winnipeg Jets was judged most valuable by writers, while Nikita Kucherov was preferred by the people whose job it is to actually figure out a way to stop him. MLB doesn’t have a structure exactly like this of course, but we get a smaller indicator of who teams are most concerned about: the intentional walk.
Major League Baseball has elected 30 times this season to put Aaron Judge on for free. The baseball world is so worried about what he can do at the plate that they just decide to face the next guy, with an additional man on base. This doesn’t get captured in fWAR because it doesn’t get captured in wOBA, the base of the offensive WAR calculation FanGraphs uses. I’m using fWAR to be fair to Raleigh — bWAR doesn’t encompass catcher framing. Cal’s only seen four fingers 13 times. Nobody else in baseball, not Shohei Ohtani or Juan Soto, has been intentionally walked more than 20 times.
This isn’t a question of lineup depth. The player that most frequently follows Judge in the batting order is Cody Bellinger, and his 129 wRC+. Randy Arozarena and Julio Rodríguez have split the most time behind Cal, and combine for a 123 wRC+ this year — the threat behind the walked hitter is pretty much the same, you’re accepting that threat because you’re so scared of what the walked hitter can do to you.
There’s also a record that Judge is chasing.
He enters play Thursday three IBBs behind the single season record for the AL, currently jointly held by Ted Williams and John Olerud. We’re not going to bring Olerud or Ted’s frozen head to every ballpark like we brought Roger Maris’ kid back in 2022, but it’s entirely possible that Aaron Judge will be issued more truly free passes than anyone in Junior Circuit history. That the Blue Jays are coming to town this weekend, a team that has given Judge first base seven different times already this year, may make that record even more reachable.
Players don’t have a version of the MVP, and don’t get to pick season-award winners. The actions teams are taking on the field though, show us which player they’re the most afraid of game in and game out.
