A Cal Raleigh Home Run Update
He did it! Cal Raleigh launched his 60th home run of the season last night, joining a rare club of elite sluggers. In hitting 60 so quickly, he’s left himself with a chance to match Aaron Judge’s American League record of 62, or perhaps even surpass it. With four games left in the season, how likely is it? I fired up my computer to ask. As a refresher, last week I modeled Raleigh’s home run hitting talent, the parks he’ll play in, and his scheduled opposition to work out which side of the plate he’ll hit from and how likely he is to hit a home run in any given plate appearance the rest of the way. Then I simulated the season a million times to work out the probability of each milestone.
Last week, 60 home runs looked likely but not certain. Now that it’s in the bag, naturally 62 home runs looks meaningfully more likely:
| Day | Opponent | Home/Away | Odds of 62nd Homer | Cumulative Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/25 | Rockies | Home | 6.1% | 6.1% |
| 9/26 | Dodgers | Home | 9.5% | 15.6% |
| 9/27 | Dodgers | Home | 11.0% | 26.6% |
| 9/28 | Dodgers | Home | 12.1% | 38.7% |
I didn’t bother with a table, but it’s worth noting that if you desperately want to see homer number 61 in person, you should go today. The Rockies pitching staff has already served up two home runs to the Big Dumper, and my model gives him about a 1-in-3 chance of hitting another off of them. On the other hand, if you want to see homer number 63, you’ll need to wait until the last minute:
| Day | Opponent | Home/Away | Odds of 63rd Homer | Cumulative Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/25 | Rockies | Home | 0.6% | 0.6% |
| 9/26 | Dodgers | Home | 2.4% | 3.0% |
| 9/27 | Dodgers | Home | 4.7% | 7.6% |
| 9/28 | Dodgers | Home | 7.0% | 14.6% |
A 15% chance is better than I expected, but then again, Raleigh got to 60 in the earlier part of the distribution I had previously forecast, so it makes sense that his odds of hitting bigger milestones have increased. Bigger numbers like 66 and 70? They’re still not really on the table, with less than a 1-in-400 chance of him hitting 66. But man, what a performance. Raleigh’s season continues to be one for the ages.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
I’m predicting that Raleigh’s going to win MVP in a landslide, though it might not be unanimous. WAR is close enough that Raleigh’s huge advantage in history-making narrative–60 HR is a big round number that few have ever reached; most HR and best season ever by a catcher; most HR by a switch hitter; passing Junior for most HR by a Mariner–is going to win him the award in a cakewalk.
Depends on which WAR the writers use. Using BBREF’s WAR, it’s not particularly close.
I wouldn’t go with baseball references war for catchers as it doesn’t account for pitch framing.
Pitch framing is likely wildly overvalued and has been ever since bpro introduced it
That’s just, like, your opinion man
If estimates of framing were accurate, every single catcher would be league MVP every year. It’s conceptually absurd.
Yeah but BREF WAR is kinda obviously the wrong way to measure catchers. It doesn’t take into account framing at all, so it says Cal is a below average defensive catcher. That’s what creates the chasm between Judge and Cal in Bwar. In this case, one measure is clearly better than the other.
I’m not making a judgment regarding which version evaluates catchers better. Based on what I’ve seen, the media tends to cite BREF more often than FWAR
I think Judge voter fatigue will factor into it too.
I don’t know if it’s voter fatigue as much as “coolness”/“history” factor. Trout didn’t have voter fatigue against Miguel Cabrera. Voters just chose “guy who did something that hadn’t happened in 40+ years that we weren’t sure would ever happen again” over “guy who was even better”.
I think we could have a similar thing here of voters choosing the “guy who did a bunch of things nobody’s ever done before” over “guy who had an even better season that’s also uncommon but not as rare as what the other guy did”.
I do think there’s a tiny bit of voter fatigue (or something related to it) because Judge hasn’t really been very good in the playoffs yet. He falls on his face to some degree and then the MVP news comes out. I think subconsciously that may be a tiny tiebreaker for some
Revisionist history here. When Cabrera was winning the MVPs over Trout, the voters were on the cusp of embracing sabermetrics to truly evaluate a player’s worth. Even in the early 2010s, traditional stats such as batting avg and RBIs still loomed large. Add in the narrative boost and boom MVP goes to Cabrera.
It’s still cool when someone does something special in regards to the traditional stats; however, sabermetrics now play a much larger role in the voting for the end of year awards.
Still, Judge’s season lacks a hook. Acuña and Betts were very similar players by WAR but Acuña had 40/70 and he won unanimously. That was two years ago. WAR still isn’t everything and anyone who does look to WAR would surely also know that bref is slighting Cal in its model.
lol a 213 ops+ should be a hook. better than any trout or cabrera season and better than judges 62 homer season
That’s just another way of saying he has been insanely valuable this year, but it isn’t useful as narrative. If the MVP were the “highest WAR award” then yes he would and should win.
I think MVP’s a legitimate tossup, but how’s this for a hook:
Here’s a complete list of players who’ve beaten Judge’s current 214 OPS+ since WWII:
Ted Williams (2x)
Mark McGwire (1)
Mickey Mantle (1)
Barry Bonds (4)
Aaron Judge (1)
He’s not just “insanely valuable,” there’s a good argument he’s having one of the 10 best offensive seasons of all time.
It’s crazy to me that the best hitter we’ve seen since Bonds plays for the Yankees and still he’s somehow underrated. It’s almost like the brain has difficulty conceptualizing the numbers difference when the OPS creeps past 1.000.
Judge could win on the strength of this, but it isn’t a hook. It just isn’t. “Over 200 OPS+” just isn’t a narrative. If it were, Raleigh wouldn’t be the easy favorite. Judge’s odds of winning, as an underdog, rest in having a slight edge in fWAR and a much bigger one in bWAR. Yes, he is also by far the better offensive player, but if he had poor defense and Raleigh were leading him in WAR, Raleigh would be -2,000, or maybe -20,000, instead of -200. It’s just the WAR advantage keeping Judge alive in this.
And Mariners’ surge, winning the division and potentially getting the 1 seed after years of futility, along with the “fatigue” factor with Judge/Ohtani among some circles, all work in Raleigh’s favor.
I don’t know that they’re ever going to get tired of giving it to Ohtani.
As long as Ohtani keeps producing new reasons to show how unique he is. Last year was definitely an opening with him not pitching, but he took care of that with the 50/50 season. Now that he is pitching better than ever, I’m expecting him to have the highest war of his career next season (e.g. 5 pitching war + 6 batting) to keep the MVP streak going.
And maybe later in his career he will win one while playing OF. 🙂
It also helps Ohtani that there simply is no one else to give it to this year. Schwarber is basically a slightly worse version of Ohtani at the plate who can’t run and doesn’t pitch and he could very well finish second.
I agree with the assessment.
That said I don’t actually think the cases are that close and that Judge has been much better at the stuff we can clearly measure and catcher framing on top of trailing by 40 points in wRC+ should give it to Judge. This isn’t Trout losing to Miggy in that it would be manifestly unjust but it is clear who the best player has been
The idea of a player hitting under .250 winning MVP over a guy with a 200 wRC+ season is insane
That’s just picking a few metrics. No one is saying Judge is not having a historic season. But Raleigh’s may be even more of an outlier given his position and playing in a ballpark that depresses offense more than any other. I don’t find it insane to believe that Raleigh may be the most valuable player this season. Catchers don’t win many MVP’s. Best BWAR ever by a catcher is 8.7 so Raleigh is likely having a Top 10 season as well, for his position.
Quoting batting average and wRC+ in the same sentence. On FG no less.
Yeah man. God forbid somebody think about anything any differently to you all on the hivemind here. Would you like to analyze all the other ways Raleigh is wildly inferior to Judge, or are you solely interested in arguing with my dislike of the aesthetic of a sub-.250 hitter?
Yeah, famously no one at Fangraphs has any interest in batting average or how much it matters. Completely disregarded and treated as antiquated.
Oh, wait.
I do think there is so much uncertainty in how much a catcher does for a team, and uncertainty in the actual differences in MLB catchers, to say that it isn’t certain who has been best. It is certain who has been best by the things that we are fairly sure we pretty much have nailed as far as how to value them, and that is Judge.
I don’t know about landslides but I think the writers are going to work very hard to avoid giving it to Aaron Judge, and so it will almost certainly go to Raleigh. They’re getting bored with him. Even last year, everyone was so fixated on Ohtani’s 50-50 season they were kind of like “oh, Aaron Judge is good too.”
When was the last time a player led MLB in WAR and also led his specific league in two out of three triple crown categories and lost the MVP? To say nothing of leading the AL / NL / majors in wRC+, RE24, OBP+, SLG+, AVG+, and ISO+?
The writers typically write a column about their choice, and it’s hard to write a column saying “the best offensive player outside of the steroid era since Mickey Mantle is still that same guy.” They want to write about something new, and something new is that someone else led MLB in homers, even though that (and RBI) are basically the only two offensive categories he doesn’t lead his league / the majors in. And they’ll justify it by saying that he plays catcher and Judge doesn’t, even though Judge is far ahead in bWAR and the incredibly generous positional adjustment and framing grades in fWAR still have Judge ahead.
Aaron Judge is perhaps the only underrated Yankee ever, and is going to be one of the most underrated players of all time if he keeps doing this and they keep giving the MVP to someone else. Our brains cannot handle what he is doing.
The positional adjustment does not get spoken about enough and is why I believe WAR underrates Judge. Outside of his injury, he was not playing DH because he was incapable of producing value in the field. The RF positional adjustment is probably also underrating him because we know he can play a roughly/ slightly below average CF if he was needed. The Yankees are not being forced to play a low-value bat in CF because of his lack of skill. This is why I think Judge should win (in addition to being far and away the best offensive player in the league).
I think you’re mistaking “how much value has Aaron Judge produced,” which is what WAR is attempting to measure, for “what is Aaron Judge’s true talent level,” where things like his theoretical ability to play CF come into play
Not really. My point is that I don’t think he should be penalized as strongly as other corner outfielders/DH because the Yankees are configured in a way that allows him to DH (due Stanton never being healthy) and play RF because they have two good defensive OFers. I think the way the players team is made up should be taken into account when thinking about positional adjustments.
He’s a bit of a tweeter defensively, he is probably better off in a corner (especially since it’s better to have him running around there less).
I think the point I was trying to make with that is that it is hard to imagine giving Raleigh a bigger bump for playing catcher than the positional adjustment, and also it’s hard to imagine docking Judge more than his positional adjustment. Those are both fairly extreme adjustments…and Judge still comes out ahead.
But who knows, maybe Cal Raleigh hits another few homers and Judge scuffles and Raleigh catches up? Not likely but possible.
Counterargument on the positional adjustment difference being too big: Austin Hedges. Dude has had a job and 100+ PA for the past 7 years despite never having a WRC+ above 50 or a BA above .190.
I’d be hard-pressed to think of a corner outfielder that comes anywhere near that profile for such an extended period of time.
To me, this illustrates that teams really do value the tangibles (e.g. framing) and intangibles (e.g. managing a pitching staff) that good catchers bring to the table, and they believe they know “good” when they see it.
Teams aren’t always right, but I think we’re well past the point that nerds are smarter than teams (who now employ very smart nerds) in any consistent way.
Just saying that teams’ roster decisions tend to reinforce that catcher is the most valuable defensive position by a wide margin, to the point of tolerating awful offense.
I think it is absolutely true that catcher should get the largest positional adjustment. But the combination of the positional adjustment and the extreme values the framing measure spits back is likely leading catchers with positive framing to be overvalued. I think the issue is probably with the framing numbers rather than the positional adjustment itself, but I could see someone arguing the reverse.
Austin Hedges is a pretty good example of this. He’s not just valuable, he’s been worth 1.2 fWAR in 178 PAs. Over 600 PAs he would be worth something like 4 wins, with a wRC+ of 49. He’s been worth about as much as Bo Naylor despite Bo Naylor having over twice as many PAs and a wRC+ that is 30 points higher. But they don’t play Hedges more often than Naylor.
Albert Pujols in 2010, after he’d won MVP in 08 and 09, led in WAR, HR, RBI, and OPS+.
Todd Helton in 2000 as well. Arod in 2002. Matt Kemp in 2011.
That’s an interesting list. Impressive that you were able to pull that up. A-Rod and Pujols were clearly “we want to give it to someone new.” Helton is because nobody believed in Coors. The Kemp situation…I don’t remember what happened there.
The Brewers made the playoffs and the Dodgers didn’t. That used to be a major factor.
Oh yeah, that is something that seems to have receded a little bit, now it is if you’re not in the playoff race. It still is a factor but aside from Ohtani we haven’t had any obvious MVP players on non-competitive teams and they weren’t going to avoid giving it to him for that.
I thought he’d win anyway as long as Judge’s WAR didn’t trounce his, based partially on voter fatigue as well as his already historic season. But we are now looking at the second 60+ homer season outside the steroid era in expansion era, over the last 60 years, and it is a catcher. And he’s a good catcher and his team just won the pennant for the first time in 24 years. Time to break out the Vince Carter gif. It’s over.
A 60-HR, switch hitting even REASONABLY good defensive catcher? That’s a unicorn even among unicorns. It would be a crime not to give that man the MVP trophy.
This has to be the most unlikely fantastic season ever.
I know projections take into account prior, as well as present, but man is he going to be a hard one to project for the future. I know this isn’t the fantasy part of the site, but let’s put it this way: I am going to let someone else draft him next year wherever the hell he is going is going to be too damn high. My guess is back end of 1st, early 2nd.
Outside of the steroid era, black players coming over from the Negro Leagues and demolishing MLB pitching, rookie seasons, and Norm Cash’s corked bat?
I think Aaron Judge’s 2022 season was more shocking simply because no one thought that level was possible without steroids anymore. And Ohtani’s 2021, because he showed it was possible to be an elite hitter and pitcher at the same time in the first time in a century.
But aside from those, this is up there. Maybe Jacoby Ellsbury in 2011, or Rico Petrocelli in 1969. But I don’t really see this as more unlikely than those seasons.
I thought of Brady Anderson
Brady Anderson and Bret Boone were some of the more obvious steroid seasons.
Also a hell of an acting job by him on Sabrina the teenage witch that year.
What kind of odds can I get that he hits #63 against Kershaw on Sunday? Not official yet, but ESPN is projecting he makes his last career regular season start.
Dodgers shouldn’t use any relievers outside of mop up in wild card round. They have 6 starters. 2 per game
Dave Roberts sure loves Tanner Scott and is still using him in big spots I wouldn’t be surprised if Tanner blows a playoff game or games.
Given they started using Kershaw out of bullpen on Wed, I doubt they’ll move him back to starting before the playoffs. They will be testing out having him and Sasaki out of bullpen.
If he hits #63 it’s probably Sunday, and the odds that he gets to 63 appear to be +550. Not terrible, if you agree with the article’s 15% chance that he gets there.
Tbf he has blalock and his 9 era tonight. Those pitches last night were just completely non competitive. Felt like Colon to Dee Gordon after Fernandez died
And just imagine who the Rockies will bring in after Blalock when they are down 7 runs
I mean I will be there at the game and ready to rock for the Rockies. I can still hit upper 70s and will break off a wicked 12-6 56mph curveball that will have the big dumper dumping. Course I’m also trying to catch his hr ball sooo depends on how many home runs they have allowed him so far
#60 came on a 98 mph fastball at the very bottom of the zone but sure
Yea but has he seen 76?
Dee P. Gordon?
He’s facing a Rockies pitcher tonight who has somehow managed an 8 career ERA over 85 innings. There’s probably even odds that he faces a position player pitching afterward as well. 1 in 3 odds for homering tonight seems low.
I don’t have an opinion about who should win the MVP because I don’t really care. I just came here to say that I was at the game last night, and when Raleigh hit number 60, Safeco Field (I don’t think I’ll ever call it T-Mobile Park) was rocking .
It’s a little weird to have loyalty to one corporate branding name over another corporate branding name. Unless you have T-Mobile because if so I could understand hating them.
I get it, I almost always call a stadium by its original name, even if it was corporate-branded. I still call Houston Minute Maid and Milwaukee Miller Park. I am not even sure off the top of my head what the new names are. If Petco or PNC or Comerica change their branding I will probably just use the old one.
(I also call it New Comiskey and the Skydome but that is something else)
Houston’s original name wasn’t Minute Maid… 😬
Pour one out for the shysters at Enron…
Haha. You’re correct, of course, to a large extent, however there are couple factors in play. Safeco started as a local business and has a long history with the city. T-Mobile, not so much. Plus it was the first name of the stadium, and I’ve never felt it a good use of my time to learn subsequent names.
I did not know that about Safeco. Literally the only thing I know about Safeco is the name of the stadium. That along with the general “what’s it called first” do I guess make this make a little more sense to me.
I know WAR counts the whole season, but if we throw out April Cal has a pretty big lead on Judge.
so now we’re just throwing out random months to create the optics we want? that’s a pretty ridiculous way to make a case. april still counts.
I didn’t say April doesn’t count. Was just looking at things. But I would say that for voters late season matters more. Also I don’t get why we use war as gospel. I’d personally vote for Judge I guess, but it is certainly close. Even by war
I agree that if you flipped Judge’s season around Raleigh would struggle to win even with the narrative of the homers
It’s weird that I’m getting downvoted for saying that what happens late in the season matters more in the eyes of the voters. Have you seen who votes?
LOL. I upvoted you just to try to keep you out of red numbers.
ditto
Matt Martell predicted the Raleigh MVP before the season: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-fangraphs-2025-staff-predictions/.
It’s also fun to look back some of the other bold predictions in https://blogs.fangraphs.com/excuse-me-our-bold-predictions-for-the-2025-season/.
He was also one of two to pick Drake Baldwin for NL ROY, though the odds aren’t nearly as strong on that one (Baldwin trails Horton significantly but not conclusively).
I’ve resigned myself to Raleigh winning MVP. I think we’ll look back on it in however many years as “yeah, Judge was probably better, but of course they voted for the catcher with 60 home runs, how could you not”
It’s just annoying because this will be the second time Judge doesn’t win MVP even though he’s probably better than the guy who did win.
That happened to Jordan at least 7 times.
I thought that a 6% chance of two homers in one game was nuts. But then I checked and, if my math is right, he has hit two homers in 7% of his games this year.
I ran the code again when I saw that result! But yeah, it checks out. I think that modeling ‘sometimes a player is hot and produces results greater than their true talent for a while’ makes this model hit surprisingly close to reality.
imo this undersells his chances against an LAD bullpen which has been terrible when it has something to play for (and might not by the time he’s in town)
If I was a betting man ( and I am) id put the o/u at 62.5
This argument is in significant degree apples and oranges. I have no problem at all agreeing that Judge’s 2025 offensive season is superior to Cal Raleigh’s, even that it is significantly superior for all of ’60’ or even ’63’ being a number attached to Raleigh’s 2025. Judge is the best offensive player in the game, nuff said . . . but that’s not enough for a ‘most valuable’ determination.
Start with the fact that Judge bats at home in one of the best hitter’s parks in the majors while Raleigh plays in the toughest hitter’s park in the game in half his ABs. Judge is still a better and certainly a more complete offensive player, but the comparison is much less of a smack down.
Than there’s durability. Raleigh has not missed an inning with injury and had only a very few days off at the most demanding physical position on the field, and that has been the case for years now. Judge’s injuries shouldn’t be held against him, but Raleigh’s availability absolutely figures into his relative value, where he has handily outperformed Judge with a far more demanding context of play and performance.
Judge used to be a very good defensive outfielder. He’s not anymore, even prior to the elbow injury. Raleigh has always been a better relative defender than Judge, even before considering comparative positional value between a good catcher and a good outfielder, a massive advantage for Cal.
Framing metrics for Raleigh are elite, and Judge has nothing of comparable value in his profile. But that is not even all or the most important aspect of Cal Raleigh’s value as a catcher. I have watched scores of Raleigh’s pitch sequence charts all season and before, and he is very good and very impactful in that regard on the performance of his pitching staffs. Sure, the pitching plans are significantly designed by coaches, and the Mariners have secured real expertise there, but Raleigh has to call the stuff in real time. His guessing game, sequences, matches to players are extremely good. Put in the Mariners’ backup catcher and a clear drop off is evident; the sequences just aren’t as good. Raleigh’s superior results are directly attributable to him, even though something very difficult to quantify. The Mariners staff has a number of guys who throw sharply dropping breaking pitches and high velocity sinkers down. Raleigh is extremely good at blocking balls in the dirt so his pitchers can keep throwing those with advanced runners and not have to change their repertoires. The point here is that Raleigh has a very substantial impact upon the relative performance outcomes for Mariners’ pitchers when he is in the game: this is a real, tangible, major value for a team that has built up a good pitching staff and depends upon them to win. Judge’s contributed ‘value’ on any of these factors? Zero; as in ‘0.’
Raleigh’s ‘value’ extends well beyond his offensive numbers, and is of a very high order in those other aspects. Enough to quite rationally trump Judge’s superior offensive value. If Raleigh was doing all the rest with 40 HRs and the offensive metrics to match, Judge is clearly a more valuable player in 2025. But that’s not the situation, is it. I think Raleigh will win 2025 MVP and deserves to without that being in any way a slight on Judge.
Judge is in the 79th percentile of OAA this season. What are you talking about, “he isn’t a very good defensive outfielder anymore”?
It’s the only thing they have to discredit Judge with any more, so they cling to it like the last plane out of Saigon
But WAR accounts for the contextual factors you describe, and it still has Judge with a healthy lead. When arguments like this get made, it’s very difficult to specify what, exactly, WAR is missing. WAR knows that Raleigh is an excellent defender, it understands that he has more plate appearances than Judge, and it understands what the baseline for catchers versus the baseline for corner outfielders. Heck, Judge is ahead of Raleigh even in terms of WPA. It’s going to be hard to define, much less measure, any contextual factors WAR fails to count that will make up a difference of half a win. It’s okay to want Raleigh to win it–I do, too, and I’m hoping he has one last tear in him to make it close enough that tie goes to the historic season. But if he does win, there’s a real chance it is because lots of people want him to win, even though Judge clearly had a better year.
WAR doesnt know he is better at calling pitches, that is not part of the formula. The OP goes into better detail than I can, but also I have to admit that I do not know the data well enough to say how ‘right’ he is.
Another thing to mention is that there are absolutely error bars in all of this. WAR is a bunch of assumptions jammed together into a single guess stew. The assumptions and guesses are pretty well understood, but even so sticking them all together is not like adding up the coins in your pocket. When two guys are close in WAR, like these two are, we really do need to get into the weeds a bit to discern if there is value we are missing.
But that’s my point: 1) it’s hard to come up with objective evidence that he is better at calling pitches; 2) yes, there are error bars, but half a win is not a razor-thin margin, it’s a pretty healthy gap (and it could go the other way and understate how much better Judge has been(; 3) the kind of things that are so subtle they are very difficult to measure in an objective way are precisely the things that don’t move the needle enough to make up for that gap.
Half a win literally is a razor thin margin though. If you look at the WAR page on the Fangraphs glossary, half a win is specifically called out as being an indistinguishable difference.
That’s very true! But the things that are not well defined and understood (i.e., the parts that WAR may be missing) could push the other direction as well, to Judge having a larger lead in “value” rather than smaller.
Don’t know about this “healthy lead” in WAR you’re referring to. As of this comment, Judge is 9.6, Cal is 9.1. That’s well within the margin of error for fWAR.
“Start with the fact that Judge bats at home in one of the best hitter’s parks in the majors”
Well, Baseball Reference has Yankee Stadium as a 98 for batting in 2025, 100 over multiple years, suggesting that it’s even or a little worse for hitters. It’s great for righties hitting opposite-field homers and otherwise subtracts a lot more than it adds.
Wait, you don’t think he can get to 74, Ben? smh you doubt the dumper
I’ve never cared this little about a home run race. Raleigh is so obviously juicing and the “narrative” around him and Mariners is just exhausting.
Yawn
It’d be one thing if he did it in Cincinnati, where the ball flies like the bats are corked.
Wfan hosts are patiently waiting for your ca
That seems a pretty random statement. Is there a buzz somewhere regarding that? I live in Aus so needless to say I’m not exactly on top of all sources of MLB rumours(though I do follow MLB trade rumors also!)
Guys don’t really turn from 30 HR hitters to 60 HR hitters playing in Safeco without some chemical assistance.
Raleigh had a dad bod before dad bods were cool.
They are cool now (is what I tell myself)
Raleigh has a 5 war advantage over the #2 Catcher. 5 OF’s or DH’s are closer to Judge in value. There are legit reasons to think Cal is the most valuable, though other reasons to prefer Judge.
I’m not going to be upset if Judge wins the MVP, BUT…. I think it’d be pretty lame if the MVP award turned into “who has the most WAR” every time. The criteria for the award (“value”) is intentionally vague, and I think it’s cool for the award to reflect more context than just “what does one God calculation compute is the best player”.
To me, sabermetrics is helpful for the MVP conversation because it avoids handing the award to the 15th best guy in the league just because he had 100 RBIs or was a good player on the best team.
But I think it’s taking it too far to say “the best player had 0.5 more WAR than the second best player, so the only rational option is the one with more WAR”. Value has objective measurable components, but is also kinda a subjective thing on purpose.
There have been catchers for 140+ years and Cal Raleigh has done a bunch of things this year than none of them (short of maybe Josh Gibson) have ever done. He’s also been the second best player in the league (by a fairly close margin) according to the only mainstream value metric that makes any attempt to account for one of his hallmark skills. There are strong arguments to vote for Judge, but I also think there’s a strong argument to vote for Cal without even considering voter fatigue.