Biggest MVP snubs ever

[G1911]

Garvey did not lead the league in a single offensive category in 1974. It’s not hypothetical stats that show this was a bad call. There’s not a single stat that supports the choice.

[Carter08]

Originally Posted by G1911

Garvey did not lead the league in a single offensive category in 1974. It’s not hypothetical stats that show this was a bad call. There’s not a single stat that supports the choice.

Agreed. Vote just shows that, as someone pointed out, there used to be a huge emphasis on whether the player was on a division winning team. Dodgers won their division and Phils were 8 games back. Doesn’t help that Schmidt was a relatively new name in 1974. But yeah, by just about any metric, he was better.

[cgjackson222]

Two of the least deserving MVPs ever have to be Roger Peckinpaugh in 1925 and Marty Marion in 1944.

Yes, they both played a valuable position in shortstop, and both played for pennant winners, but their hitting was abysmal, and neither was the best player on their team.

Peckinpaugh's slash line was .294/.367/.379 with 4 HRs and 64 RBIs. His OPS+ was 91 and WAR was a measly 2.7. Amazingly, he only appeared in 126 games. About 20 people deserved the MVP more than he did. Certainly Harry Heilmann and Al Simmons were more deserving. Heilmann's slash line was .393/.457/.569 with 13 HRs, 134 RBIs and an OPS+ of 161. Simmons' slashed .387/.419/.599 with 24 HRs, 129 RBIs and OPS+ of 149. Also, Simmons had more than twice as many hits with his leading 253 to Peckinpaugh's paltry 124 hits.

Marty Marion's slash line in 1944 was .267/.324/.362 with 6 HRs, 63 RBIs and an OPS+ of 90. His teammate, a guy named Stan Musial slashed .347/.440/.549 with 12 HRs and 94 RBIs. Musial had a League leading 197 hits to Marion's 135 and had an OPS+ of 174. Yet Musial finished 4th in the voting.

Apparently it was customary to just hand over the MVP to the shortstop of the pennant winner, regardless how awful he was at hitting.