Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson was named the 2015 AL MVP by the BBWAA on Thursday night, edging out Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout.
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In the National League, the best player – not the best player from a playoff team – scored a victory for WAR as Bryce Harper and his MLB-best 9.5 score as computed by fangraphs.com collected all 30 first-place votes despite the Nationals falling flat on their face as a team.
Donaldson, a first-time victor, is the second former Tiger to win an MVP award.
Lorenzo Cain of the World Series champion Kansas City Royals was third. Harper, who won the award in a unanimous vote, became the first NL player under the age of 24 to win the MVP since Johnny Bench did so in 1970. He finished tied for the NL lead in home runs with 42 while hitting.330, good enough for second in the league. Donaldson also became the first player since Willie Hernandez in 1984 to win the award in the season after he was traded.
Harper beat out Arizona’s Paul Goldschmidt (2nd) and Cincinnati’s Joey Votto (3rd) in the ballot.
Donaldson was quietly one of the better players in the American League from 2013-2014, which is why many were caught off guard when the Athletics traded him to the Blue Jays last winter. Later that year, he was drafted by the Washington Nationals and Harper began his professional career as an outfielder for them. Major League Baseball Communications added that Trout, Barry Bonds, Yogi Berra and Stan Musial are the only players to finish in the top two of MVP voting four years in a row.
Harper finished with a. 649 slugging percentage and a. 460 on-base average.
This year, Harper played 153 games, avoided the disabled list and kept climbing the stat charts.
Donaldson collected 23 first-place votes.
Donaldson made all sorts of incredible defensive plays this season, but this one stands as the most memorable.
“I remember the first time I heard it and it was kind of like, ‘OK these guys are starting to get pretty serious about what’s going on here, ‘” Donaldson said on a conference call. Also, voters may be experiencing a bit of Trout fatigue, to where a candidate with similar credentials looks appealing because he’s new and different. He is only the second third baseman to collected at least 40 homers, 120 RBIs and 120 runs.
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“My agency and my family, we talked about it and we saw the bigger picture as far as being able to play in Toronto, being able to play in the American League East and being able to hit in the lineup we have in Toronto”, Donaldson said.
