Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award

The Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award is an annual Major League Baseball award given to one outstanding player in the American League and one in the National League. The award has been presented by the Baseball Writers' Association of America since 1931.

History

Since 1931, the Baseball Writers' Association of America has bestowed a most valuable player award to a player in the National League and a player in the American League. Before 1931, two similar awards were issued: the League Award was issued during 1922–1928 in the American League and during 1924–1929 in the National League. During 1911–1914, the Chalmers Award was issued to a player in each league. Criteria and a list of winners for these two earlier awards are detailed in below sections.
MVP voting takes place before the postseason, but the results are not announced until after the World Series. The BBWAA began by polling three writers in each league city in 1938, reducing that number to two per league city in 1961. The BBWAA does not offer a clear-cut definition of what "most valuable" means, instead leaving the judgment to the individual voters.
In 1944, the award was named after Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the first Commissioner of Baseball, who served from 1920 until his death on November 25, 1944. Formally named the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award, that naming appeared on a plaque given to winning players. Starting in 2020, Landis' name no longer appears on the MVP plaque, after the BBWAA received complaints from several former MVP winners about Landis' role against the integration of MLB.
First basemen, with 35 winners, have won the most MVPs among infielders, followed by second basemen, third basemen, and shortstops. Of the 25 pitchers who have won the award, 15 are right-handed while 10 are left-handed. Walter Johnson, Carl Hubbell, and Hal Newhouser are the only pitchers who have won multiple times, with Newhouser winning consecutively in 1944 and 1945.
Hank Greenberg, Stan Musial, Alex Rodriguez, Robin Yount, and Shohei Ohtani have won at different positions, while Rodriguez is the only player who has won the award with two different teams at two different positions, and Ohtani the only one to do it at two positions in the same season. Rodriguez and Andre Dawson are the only players to win the award while on a last-place team, the 2003 Texas Rangers and 1987 Chicago Cubs, respectively. Barry Bonds has won the most often and the most consecutively. Jimmie Foxx was the first player to win multiple times. Ten players have won three times, and 19 have won twice. Frank Robinson and Shohei Ohtani are the only players to win the award in both the American and National Leagues, with Ohtani being the first to win in both leagues in consecutive seasons.
The award's only tie occurred in the National League in 1979, when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell received an equal number of points. There have been 23 unanimous winners, who received all the first-place votes. The New York Yankees have the most winning players with 24, followed by the St. Louis Cardinals with 21 winners. The award has never been presented to a member of the following three teams: Arizona Diamondbacks, New York Mets, and Tampa Bay Rays.
In recent decades, pitchers have rarely won the award. When Ohtani won the AL award in 2021, he became the first pitcher in either league to be named the MVP since Clayton Kershaw in 2014, and the first in the American League since Justin Verlander in 2011. Ohtani also became the first two-way player to win the award and in 2023, he became the first player in MLB history to win MVP by unanimous vote twice. Since the creation of the Cy Young Award in 1956, he is the only pitcher to win an MVP award without winning a Cy Young in the same year. Ohtani is also the only MVP winner to have played most of his games as a designated hitter, a position that normally does not contribute on defense. In 2024, after winning his third career unanimous MVP award, Ohtani became the first MVP winner to have played exclusively as a DH in a season. To date, Ohtani is the only player to win both the MVP and the Edgar Martínez Award, an award given to the most outstanding DH in a season.
There was no award given by either league in 1930, which meant that one of the single greatest performances ever went unheralded when Hack Wilson of the Chicago Cubs set the current MLB record for RBI with 191. He also batted.356 and set the NL record with 56 HRs, a record which stood for 68 years until Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both eclipsed him.

Key

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, and Chalmers ended up awarding cars to both players.
In the following season, Chalmers created the Chalmers Award. A committee of baseball writers was to convene after the season to determine the "most important and useful player to the club and the league." Since the award was not as effective at advertising as Chalmers had hoped, it was discontinued after 1914.

Year	American League winner	Team	Position	National League winner	Team	Position	Ref
		Detroit Tigers	OF		Chicago Cubs	OF
		Boston Red Sox	OF		*	2B
			RHP		Brooklyn Superbas	1B
		*	2B		*	2B

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, and player-coaches and prior award winners were ineligible. Famously, these criteria resulted in Babe Ruth winning only a single MVP award before it was dropped after 1928. The National League award, without these restrictions, lasted from 1924 to 1929. In 1929, The Sporting News began awarding The Sporting News Most Valuable Player Award, albeit with the first year being for the American League only. The voting system from before also did their own balloting on an unofficial level. Lew Fonseca was voted unofficial AL MVP while Al Simmons won The Sporting News MVP. The 1930 season saw unofficial votes for both leagues alongside the Sporting News doing their own awards. Joe Cronin and Bill Terry were voted the Sporting News MVP while Cronin and Hack Wilson won the unofficial BBWAA vote. The Hall of Fame plaques for both Cronin and Terry mention them as the Most Valuable Player in 1930.

Year	American League winner	Team	Position	National League winner	Team	Position	Ref
			1B	—
		New York Yankees*	OF	—
		Washington Senators*	RHP			RHP
		Washington Senators*	SS		St. Louis Cardinals	2B
		Cleveland Indians	1B		St. Louis Cardinals*	C
		New York Yankees*	1B		Pittsburgh Pirates*	OF
			C		St. Louis Cardinals*	1B
	—				Chicago Cubs*	2B

BBWAA Most Valuable Player (1931–present)

The Baseball Writers' Association of America was first awarded the modern MVP after the 1931 season, adopting 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, with ten points for the recipient of a first-place vote, nine for a second-place vote, and so on. In 1938, the BBWAA raised the number of voters to three per city and gave 14 points for a first-place vote. The only significant change since then occurred in 1961 when the number of voters was reduced to two per league city.

Year	American League winner	Team	Position	National League winner	Team	Position	Ref
	^†	*	LHP	^†	St. Louis Cardinals*	2B
	^†		1B	^†	Philadelphia Phillies	OF
	^†	Philadelphia Athletics	1B	^†	*	LHP
	^†	Detroit Tigers*	C	^†	St. Louis Cardinals*	RHP
	^†§	Detroit Tigers*	1B	^†	Chicago Cubs*	C
	^†	New York Yankees*	1B	^†§	New York Giants*	LHP
	^†	Detroit Tigers	2B	^†	St. Louis Cardinals	OF
	^†	Boston Red Sox	1B	^†	Cincinnati Reds	C
	^†	New York Yankees*	OF		Cincinnati Reds*	RHP
	^†	Detroit Tigers*	OF		Cincinnati Reds*	1B
	^†	New York Yankees*	OF		*	1B
	^†	New York Yankees*	2B		St. Louis Cardinals*	RHP
		New York Yankees*	RHP	^†	St. Louis Cardinals*	OF
	^†	Detroit Tigers	LHP		St. Louis Cardinals*	SS
	^†	Detroit Tigers*	LHP		Chicago Cubs*	1B
	^†	Boston Red Sox*	OF	^†	St. Louis Cardinals*	1B
	^†	New York Yankees*	OF			3B
	^†	Cleveland Indians*	SS	^†	St. Louis Cardinals	OF
	^†	Boston Red Sox	OF	^†	Brooklyn Dodgers*	2B
	^†	New York Yankees*	SS		Philadelphia Phillies*	RHP
	^†	New York Yankees*	C	^†	Brooklyn Dodgers	C
			LHP		Chicago Cubs	OF
	^§	Cleveland Indians	3B	^†	Brooklyn Dodgers*	C
	^†	New York Yankees	C	^†	New York Giants*	OF
	^†	New York Yankees*	C	^†	Brooklyn Dodgers*	C
	^†§	New York Yankees*	OF		Brooklyn Dodgers*	RHP
	^†	New York Yankees*	OF	^†	*	OF
		Boston Red Sox	OF	^†	Chicago Cubs	SS
	^†	Chicago White Sox*	2B	^†	Chicago Cubs	SS
		New York Yankees*	OF		Pittsburgh Pirates*	SS
		New York Yankees*	OF	^†	Cincinnati Reds*	OF
	^†	New York Yankees*	OF		Los Angeles Dodgers	SS
		New York Yankees*	C	^†	Los Angeles Dodgers*	LHP
	^†	Baltimore Orioles	3B		St. Louis Cardinals*	3B
		Minnesota Twins*	SS	^†	San Francisco Giants	OF
	^†§	Baltimore Orioles*	OF	^†	Pittsburgh Pirates	OF
	^†	Boston Red Sox*	OF	^†§	St. Louis Cardinals*	1B
	^§	Detroit Tigers*	RHP	^†	St. Louis Cardinals*	RHP
	^†	Minnesota Twins	3B	^†	San Francisco Giants	1B
		Baltimore Orioles*	1B	^†	Cincinnati Reds*	C
		Oakland Athletics	LHP	^†	St. Louis Cardinals	3B
	^†	Chicago White Sox	1B	^†	Cincinnati Reds*	C
	^†§	Oakland Athletics*	OF		Cincinnati Reds	OF
		Texas Rangers	OF		Los Angeles Dodgers*	1B
		Boston Red Sox*	OF	^†	Cincinnati Reds*	2B
		New York Yankees*	C	^†	Cincinnati Reds*	2B
	^†	Minnesota Twins	1B		Cincinnati Reds	OF
	^†	Boston Red Sox	OF	^†	Pittsburgh Pirates	OF
			LF/DH		St. Louis Cardinals	1B
			LF/DH	^†	Pittsburgh Pirates*	1B
	^†	Kansas City Royals*	3B	^†§	Philadelphia Phillies*	3B
	^†	Milwaukee Brewers	RHP	^†	Philadelphia Phillies	3B
	^†	Milwaukee Brewers*	SS		Atlanta Braves	OF
	^†	Baltimore Orioles*	SS		Atlanta Braves	OF
		Detroit Tigers*	LHP	^†	Chicago Cubs	2B
		New York Yankees	1B		St. Louis Cardinals*	OF
		Boston Red Sox*	RHP	^†	Philadelphia Phillies	3B
		Toronto Blue Jays	OF	^†	Chicago Cubs	OF
	^§	Oakland Athletics*	OF		Los Angeles Dodgers*	OF
	^†	Milwaukee Brewers	OF		San Francisco Giants*	OF
	^†	Oakland Athletics*	OF		Pittsburgh Pirates	OF
	^†	Baltimore Orioles	SS		Atlanta Braves*	3B
	^†	Oakland Athletics	RHP		Pittsburgh Pirates	OF
	^†§	Chicago White Sox	1B		San Francisco Giants	OF
	^†	Chicago White Sox	1B	^†§	Houston Astros	1B
		Boston Red Sox	1B	^†	Cincinnati Reds	SS
		Texas Rangers	OF	^§	San Diego Padres	3B
	^†§	Seattle Mariners	OF	^†	Colorado Rockies	OF
		Texas Rangers	OF		Chicago Cubs	OF
	^†	Texas Rangers	C	^†	Atlanta Braves*	3B
		Oakland Athletics	1B	^†	San Francisco Giants	2B
	^†	Seattle Mariners	OF		San Francisco Giants	OF
		Oakland Athletics	SS	^§	San Francisco Giants*	OF
		Texas Rangers	SS		San Francisco Giants	OF
	^†		OF		San Francisco Giants	OF
		New York Yankees	3B		St. Louis Cardinals	1B
		Minnesota Twins	1B		Philadelphia Phillies	1B
		New York Yankees	3B		Philadelphia Phillies	SS
		Boston Red Sox	2B		St. Louis Cardinals	1B
	^†	Minnesota Twins	C	^§	St. Louis Cardinals	1B
		Texas Rangers*	OF		Cincinnati Reds	1B
	^{^}	Detroit Tigers	RHP		Milwaukee Brewers	OF
		Detroit Tigers*	3B		San Francisco Giants*	C
		Detroit Tigers	3B	^{^}	Pittsburgh Pirates	OF
	^{^§}	Los Angeles Angels	OF		Los Angeles Dodgers	LHP
		Toronto Blue Jays	3B	^{^§}	Washington Nationals	OF
	^{^}	Los Angeles Angels	OF	^{^}	Chicago Cubs*	3B/OF
	^{^}	Houston Astros*	2B	^{^}	Miami Marlins	OF
	^{^}	Boston Red Sox*	OF	^{^}	Milwaukee Brewers	OF
	^{^}	Los Angeles Angels	OF	^{^}	Los Angeles Dodgers	OF
		Chicago White Sox	1B	^{^}	Atlanta Braves	1B
	^{^§}	Los Angeles Angels	RHP/DH	^{^}	Philadelphia Phillies	OF
	^{^}	New York Yankees	OF	^{^}	St. Louis Cardinals	1B
	^{^§}	Los Angeles Angels	RHP/DH	^{^§}	Atlanta Braves	OF
	^{^§}	New York Yankees*	OF	^{^§}	Los Angeles Dodgers*	DH
	^{^}	New York Yankees	OF	^{^§}	Los Angeles Dodgers*	RHP/DH