For the first time since 2020, the American League MVP was awarded to a man not named Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani. Those two have dominated the decade of baseball, becoming the national—and in Ohtani’s case—global face of the sport, and that’s been a successful transition away from the likes of Mike Trout and the Houston Astros. Baseball is hot right now!
And maybe we’re starting to see a little bit of a changing of the guard, again. Pete Crow-Armstrong just ended Ohtani’s run of three consecutive
MVPs, putting together one of the finest, top-to-bottom baseball seasons we’ve ever seen. Ohtani’s a month younger than me; players and especially pitchers don’t tend to get better after age 33. Judge will turn 35 in April; Father Time comes for all of us.
All of this brings me to one Robert Andrew Witt, Junior. The Kansas City shortstop put up his third-straight seven-win season in 2026, good for second in all of baseball behind PCA. He was once again a finalist for the league’s top individual honor, finishing third, trailing Yordan Alvarez and Junior Caminero. In so many was for the man who, if not for PCA, would be the best all-around player in baseball, it’s a rinse and repeat system.
Last year Witt had an 8.0 fWAR season, finishing fourth in MVP voting behind Judge, Cal Raleigh and the previous perennial MVP nominee, José Ramírez. In 2024, Witt had maybe the best single season by a shortstop…ever. Since integration, only two players—Cal Ripken Jr. in 1991 and Lou Boudreau in 1948—have been better than the Royal’s 10.5 fWAR season. Both Cal and Lou won MVPs.
Bobby just had the misfortune to have to once again go up against Aaron Judge, the man with the best prime of any player since Barry Bonds’ head grew three sizes. Witt’s 2025 season ranks 15th on that list by the way.
J-Ram very famously has the most combined MVP shares without having actually won the award, 3.61 in his Hall of Fame-caliber career, one spent chasing down Mike Trout before Ohtani and Judge took over the AL. After receiving votes in each of the last four seasons, though, Witt is starting to move up that all-time list. His 44.76 percent share this year bumps his career MVP share to 1.8, from 202nd all time in the metric to a tie for 136th, with Rod Carew and Robin Yount, who of course both took home the hardware in their careers (Yount twice).
Part of this as touched on above is Witt having to go up against demons, but another part of it is the way he puts up value. Since entering the league in 2022, Witt has the most second-most fWAR (yes, better than Ohtani!) but critically, Dansby Swanson is the only non-catcher to eclipse him in dWAR. As we saw last year with Cal Raleigh in the MVP race, a supreme offensive performance just gets rewarded at a level that supreme defense does not. Outside of pitchers and catchers for obvious reasons, the slugger gets MVP.
And of course playing for mediocre Kansas City teams doesn’t help the case. Aaron Judge has near single-handedly dragged the Yankees into the postseason, the Cubs season is probably a failure without PCA’s effort this year. That Witt’s only stepped foot on the postseason once—perhaps not coincidentally, his runner-up finish in 2024—has affected how voters behave, even if I wonder whether it should.
If Judge is back to being Judge next year, or Kevin McGonigle takes another step forward, or any number of things happen, there odds are forever against Bobby Witt Jr. winning an MVP. If he should never get there, I hope he ends up atop that MVP shares list, passing J-Ram. Then again, Chris Sale never won a Cy Young until that one year it all went right.
