![]() Soto played 10 more games than Harper (151-141). But as Barry Svrluga pointed out in his excellent Why Soto Should be the NL MVP column in the Washington Post, it’s important to compare Soto and Harper in a different category when a race is this tight: I’m going to save the Wins Above Replacement part of this debate for later, because it’s complicated. The other three were all MVP seasons, because, well, of course they were. There was no official MVP award in the 1920s. Here’s every qualifying hitter in the live-ball era who averaged two times on base per game at Soto’s age or younger: Have I mentioned he played the entire season at age 22? How “valuable” is an offensive force who reaches base twice a game, every game? That’s also a question for the Juan Soto MVP discussion. So every discussion of Juan Soto, MVP candidate, has to start there, doesn’t it? And in the last 89 seasons, the time in which we’ve used All-Star Games to break the season into halves, only three other qualifying hitters have matched or bettered that OBP in any second half:Įven if we venture back to the beginning of the live-ball era in 1920, before there was any such invention as an “All-Star break,” it only adds Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby and Harry Heilman to the list. That’s not humanly possible, is it? Not for earthlings, anyway. Reached base (via hit, walk, HBP): 169 times Let’s break down those 322 trips for you: So it was his second half where he really began making us historians pay attention.Īfter the All-Star break, Soto came to the plate 322 times. ![]() ![]() Soto’s OBP still started with a “3” as late as July 6 - which was 74 games into his season. Here, just for perspective’s sake, is a list of every qualifying hitter in the live-ball era who had an OBP that good in his age-22 season or younger:īut here’s what makes that especially ridiculous. But the argument, essentially, comes down to this:Īt 22 years old, playing on a team going nowhere, Soto had an on-base percentage of. But does that mean he deserved to be the MVP of this season? If you think he is, you’re not wrong. So who knows how many MVP awards he will win before he’s through? Two? Five? 12? Anything is possible. And the more you watch him, the more obvious it becomes that normal humans, at age 19-20-21-22, don’t do the things he does every day. He’s the most gifted, most advanced young hitter in our solar system. I don’t know what planet Juan Soto learned to play baseball on, but it can’t have been this one. So who really had the better season? Who really had the more historic and impactful second half? Who really deserves this award, which will be handed out Thursday night? Let’s dig into it here, because MVP debates don’t get much more entertaining than this. It’s as if Daniel Craig was up for an Oscar for his James Bond artistry against Pierce Brosnan. And now they’re duking it out for an MVP trophy. Once, it was Harper who was the Nationals’ ultimate lightning rod … until he took the Phillies’ money, rode up I-95 and left the stage to Soto. Two hitters who arrived at this MVP arena riding dueling, historic second halves. Two outsized personalities, housed inside two dudes who have had a monster presence in their sport since pretty much the first moment we saw them swing a bat. The gaps between his actual and expected numbers in both categories are the third and eighth biggest in the Majors, respectively, further supporting the fact that a lot of the balls Harper put in play for outs, should’ve been hits.Two mega-talented, don’t leave that screen ’cause they’re coming up young players, already arguably on Hall of Fame tracks. 453 ranked third-best, behind just Soto and Freddie Freeman. 400 wOBA - a stat used to measure how a player reaches base - good for 21st in baseball, while his xwOBA of. 656 ranked second-best in the Majors, trailing only Juan Soto. 542 last season, a very respectable mark that ranked 39th among qualified hitters, but his xSLG of. expected slugging, and weighted on-base vs. Similar observations can be made from his slugging vs. 308, or 40 points higher than he actually did. That means based on the quality of and amount of contact Harper made last season, he really should’ve hit. 268 batting average ranked 111th among qualified Major League hitters in 2020, but his. In all three categories, the former MVP’s actual results don’t do him justice. The differences between Harper’s actual numbers and his expected outcome numbers are significant.
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