Bellinger vs. Yelich - MVP

[Peter_Spaeth]

Yelich was having a terrific year when he went down. He isn't the MVP. Bill always makes strong arguments but I am guessing if he wasn't so biased in favor of the Brewers he could make different arguments from the same data.

[Touch'EmAll]

Living in Oregon and growing up in SoCal, I have absolutely no ties or love for the Brewers, couldn't care less about the team in general.

Looking at some monthly breakdowns for the bulk of the season of just simply batting averages (power numbers would skew even more in favor of Yelich):

-------- Bellinger Yelich Difference
June --- .272 ---- .365 --- a lot
July --- .265 ---- .352 --- a lot
August --- .235 ---- .306 --- a lot
Sep/Oct --- .280 ---- .345 --- a lot

Bellinger had a wonderful memorable great terrific... month or so

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Yelich was having a terrific year when he went down. He isn't the MVP. Bill always makes strong arguments but I am guessing if he wasn't so biased in favor of the Brewers he could make different arguments from the same data.

I really couldn't. I'm a bit long-winded because the evidence supporting his winning is compelling. The standard numbers make the case for Yelich. The situational stats are very close for Yelich and Rendon.

Yelich was the best hitter in the league this year by far.
Bellinger, who was great for half a year, good for the other half.
Rendon, who was consistent all year, but in the aggregate, not quite as good as Yelich.

A .265 AVG for half a season in a year when multiple teams have hit 300 home runs just isn't MVP worthy. I'm sorry. I don't care how great he was before the break. He was average (at best) in the second half. And while there's some discrepancy as to how WAR is calculated, with BBR showing Bellinger clearly ahead, and Fangraphs having them at a dead heat-both show those two well ahead of Rendon.