Quote:
Originally Posted by Tabe
A few things:
First, Campanella won the MVP in 1951, 1953 and 1955, not 1951, 1952 and 1953.
Second, in 1953, his second MVP season, he had a higher WAR than Jackie - 6.8 vs 5.9. It would be hard to argue that a catcher playing good defense while hitting .312 with 41 homers and a 154 OPS+ is NOT the right choice for MVP.
Third, their 1951 seasons show just how goofy WAR is when comparing players. Campanella hit .325 with 33 homers and a 159 OPS+ while playing good defense (dWAR of 1.1) but gets a WAR of 6.9. Jackie hits .338 with 19 homers and a 154 OPS+ while playing great defense (2.4 dWAR) and gets a 9.7 WAR. Basically, Jackie benefited from the rest of his contemporaries at 2B being relatively terrible so he gets a bump from WAR. I think Campy had the better season, your mileage might vary.
Finally, during his actual third MVP season of 1955, Campy had a WAR of 5.2 while Jackie had a 2.6 while missing 49 games.
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My mistake, I wrote the wrong MVP years, but the WAR figures I provided were from the correct years ('51, '53 and '55), as shown in Baseball Reference.com
Are you using Baseball Reference for your WAR, or FanGraphs? Or something else?
Let's not forget the year Jackie won MVP where (according to Baseball Reference) Jackie's WAR was 9.3 compared to Campanella's 4.5
https://www.baseball-reference.com/a..._NL_MVP_voting
I am not trying to argue who is the best player, I am just saying that going based off of Campanella's 3 MVPs is not a great indicator that he was a better player than Jackie.