As evidenced by my team’s unceremonious exit from the first round of the RazzSlam playoffs, I didn’t do a great job following baseball this year. Sure, every week I’d put out my beloved, world-famous, award-winning column, Two-Start Dive Bar, but that’s a niche area, a product of and for weekly-change roto fantasy leagues.
Apparently, there has been some hullabaloo surrounding the candidates for the American League MVP Award. By my understanding, some gargantuan, fellow Northern-Californian playing in the media-darling City of New York hit a couple’a dongs, while the current favorite son of the land of the rising sun, plying his wares out here on the Best Coast has found a way to literally duplicate himself and play as two men.
Well damn.
Of course, Aaron Judge’s Yankees are in the postseason, division champs; Shohei Ohtani’s Halos are golfing and grilling burgers. For some folks, that’s the end of the argument: if Judge is on a better team, then clearly he is more valuable than Ohtani; if Ohtani were more valuable, obviously, he could win three-dozen games all by himself and pull the Angels out of mediocrity.
Of course, the people who make that argument are completely asinine and you should definitely un-friend them, both here in the virtual wilds of the internet, and in real life. If you hear someone make such an argument at a bar: laugh them out of the room.
OK then, how can we decide who is the Most Valuable Player in the American League? And what does this have to do with the RazzSlam (certainly something my editor is currently asking himself)? Editors Note: I am…
To begin, let me start by congratulating our 2022 RazzSlam Champion, Bob Cyphers of The Dynasty Guru! Nice work, Bob! While looking at Bob’s roster, and the roster of runner-up (and therefore still quite a fantastic player) Tom McGrath (“regular joes” represent!) it occurred to me that, in all likelihood, the very best players in baseball will be on some, if not all, of these rosters. The folks who made it here to the end. The Championship Bracket Final 10.
So, in the immortal words of me, in my Two-Start Dive Bar column: why don’t you and I dive right in?
First, let’s take a look at the collective “Best players in baseball” for 2022: The top ten hitters and top ten pitchers according to Rudy Gamble’s Player Rater. The hitters are Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt, Freddie Freeman, Pete Alonso, Trea Turner, Jose Ramirez, Manny Machado, Mookie Betts, Dansby Swanson, and Francisco Lindor. The pitchers are Justin Verlander, Sandy Alcantara, Julio Urias, Alek Manoah, Shohei Ohtani, Emmanuel Clase, Dylan Cease, Yu Darvish, Carlos Rodon, and Zac Gallen.
Whew.
OK, now that’s out of the way. I used some super serious spreadsheet-fu to grab all the players who made any contribution to each of the rosters of the Top 10 finalists. That’s right, every player who scored even 1 point for any one of the teams that made it into the finals there. I want to see which players appear on multiple rosters, and how many.
So, some interesting findings:
- 361 unique players contributed in some way to one or more of these 10 rosters. 242 of them appeared, all season long, on just one of these ten. That leaves 119 players with some amount of finalist crossover.
- Four of the 20 “best players” listed above didn’t appear on any of these rosters: Paul Goldschmidt, Pete Alonso, Alek Manoah, and Dylan Cease were nowhere to be found!
- Shohei Ohtani appears on runner-up McGrath’s roster… and nowhere else among the ten finalists.
So let’s dig in further to these players. Eight of the Player Rater’s favorites appear on just one roster each, including Ohtani. I won’t list them all here. If you really want to see who, you can use the process of elimination. Work for it. That leaves eight players who are our actual candidates, as they appear on multiple finalist rosters: Yu Darvish, Trea Turner, Mookie Betts, Manny Machado, Francisco Lindor, Emmanuel Clase, Dansby Swanson, and Aaron Judge.
So who appeared on the most rosters? Of this group, the answer is clear: Aaron Judge was on four finalist rosters, including the Champ’s. The other seven appeared on just two apiece.
So that’s the end of the story then, eh? Aaron Judge is MVP?
Not so fast.
Judge was not the only player who appeared on four of these rosters. In addition to the future San Francisco Giant, Cesar Hernandez, Jeffrey Springs, and Nathaniel Lowe appear on four sheets. So how is Judge any more valuable than Cesar Hernandez? The numbers clearly say: he isn’t.
There is another player in the mix here. One man appears on not three, not four, but five of the finalist rosters, including both Cyphers’ and McGrath’s top two, something even the seven-foot-tall Judge cannot claim.
Ladies and gentlemen: the undeniable Most Valuable Player in not just the American League this season, but in all of baseball, is none other than Jordan Romano.
End the conversation, hand over the award… and we’ll see you next year for RazzSlam 4! Sign up below to be considered for entry.
Congrats again, Bob and Tom!
12-Team, modified Best Ball played at NFBC. Here's the Rules.
*REQUIRED
