Biggest MVP snubs ever

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

Sorry to bump my own thread, but we were talking about Steve Garvey in a thread on the front page, and I was looking at his MVP year in '74.

Garvey wasn’t even the best player on his team—that would be Jim Wynn.
More than a dozen players deserved the award more than Garvey, but none as much as Mike Schmidt.

Garvey's slash line: .312/.342/.469 with an OPS of .811 and an OPS+ of 130.
Garvey had 21 HRs and 111 RBIs.

Schmidt's slash line: .282/.395/.546 w/ an OPS of .941 and an OPS+ of 158.
Schmidt led the League in HRs with 36 as well as slugging.

Schmidt even stole 23 bases to Garvey's 5.

Schmidt was an outstanding fielder at third base, and Garvey, despite winning a Gold Glove, was a below average fielder at first base.

Schmidt's league leading WAR of 9.8 was more than double Garvey's 4.4.

And Schmidt came in 6th place in MVP voting.

Point taken on Schmidt being the better player. That's a given I think.

Aside from the fact OPS+ and WAR were long from springing into existence to assess players on, I've gotta dispute the "Below Average Fielder at 1st Base" statement.

I'm not a Garvey mark by any means, but Garvey was 1st in the league in Range Factor and 2nd in the league in Fielding% at 1st Base. I'm not sure what else he's supposed to do to appease the WAR Gods.

It still kind of blows my mind that DH's get more of a benefit of the doubt in regards to Defensive WAR then 1st Basemen. A defensively average 1st Baseman who plays the field everyday is seen as a less valuable commodity defensively than a DH by the WAR metric.

The only defensive position on the field that sees more action than the 1st baseman is the Catcher. Yankees were blessed with a string of fantastic defensive 1st basemen in Don Mattingly, Tino Martinez and Mark Teixeira.

However between Martinez and Teixeira we were cursed with Jason Giambi. An Offensive juggernaut and an OBP god in his prime, but an absolute goofball at 1st base. When they couldn't push him into the DH hole, which was often, since the Yankees have always loved to employ multiple DH types every year, the entire infields morale would take a hit.

From the eye test anyways, it seems obvious to me, that an excellent 1st Baseman takes a lot of pressure off the rest of the infield.