The Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) is a Major League Baseball (MLB) award given each year to one outstanding player in the American and National Leagues. Since 1931, it has been awarded by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA). The winner receives the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award. The award is named in honor of the first MLB commissioner. Landis served from 1920 to 1944. MVP voting takes place before the postseason. The results are not announced until after the World Series. The BBWAA began asking three writers in each league city in 1938. They made that number two per league city in 1961.
First basemen, with 34 winners, have won the most MVPs among infielders. This is followed by second basemen (16), third basemen (15), and shortstops (15). Of the twenty-four pitchers who have won the award, fifteen are right-handed while nine are left-handed. Walter Johnson, Carl Hubbell, and Hal Newhouser are the only pitchers to win more than once. Newhouser won his in back-to-back seasons, 1944 and 1945. Stan Musial, Alex Rodriguez, and Robin Yount have won at different positions. Rodriguez is the only player to win the award with two different teams at two different positions. Barry Bonds has won the most often (seven times). He has also won it the most times in a row (2001–2004). Jimmie Foxx was the first player to win more than once. Nine players have won three times and 19 have won twice.
The award's only tie occurred in the National League in 1979 when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell received the same amount of points. There have been 17 unanimous winners, meaning they received all the first-place votes. The New York Yankees have the most winning players with 22. The St. Louis Cardinals have the second most with 17 winners. Five teams have not had a winner. The most recent winners are Aaron Judge in the American League and Paul Goldschmidt in the National League.
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Chalmers Award (1911–1914)
Before the 1910 season, Hugh Chalmers of Chalmers Automobile announced he would present a Chalmers Model 30 automobile to the player with the highest batting average in Major League Baseball at the end of the season. The 1910 race for best average in the American League was between the Detroit Tigers' widely disliked Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie of the Cleveland Indians. On the last day of the season, Lajoie overtook Cobb's batting average with seven bunt hits against the St. Louis Browns. American League President Ban Johnson said a recalculation showed that Cobb had won the race anyway. Chalmers ended up giving cars to both players.
The following season, Chalmers created the Chalmers Award. A committee of baseball writers were to come together after the season to determine the "most important and useful player to the club and to the league". Since the award was not as useful at advertising as Chalmers had hoped, it was discontinued after 1914.
League Awards (1922–1929)
In 1922 the American League created a new award to honor "the baseball player who is of the greatest all-around service to his club". Winners, voted on by a committee of eight baseball writers chaired by James Crusinberry, received a bronze medal and a cash prize. Voters were required to select one player from each team. Player-managers and prior award winners were could not win. These problems resulted in the award's being dropped after 1928. The National League award, without these restrictions, lasted from 1924 to 1929.
Baseball Writers Association of America's Most Valuable Player (1931–present) The BBWAA first awarded the modern MVP after the 1931 season, took the format the National League used to distribute its league award. One writer in each city with a team filled out a ten-place ballot. Ten points were given for the recipient of a first-place vote, nine for a second-place vote, and so on. In 1938, the BBWAA raised the amount of voters to three per city and gave 14 points for a first-place vote. The only significant change since then happened in 1961, when the number of voters was lowered to two per league city.
Notes
A player is considered inactive if he has announced his retirement or not played for a full season. A unanimous victory indicates that the player received all possible first-place votes. Hernandez and Stargell both received 216 points in the 1979 voting.