Why Royals' Bobby Witt Jr. Should Win AL MVP Over Yankees' Aaron Judge

The last time Aaron Judge hit 60 home runs, not even Shohei Ohtani, at the height of his two-way powers, could deny him the American League MVP.

Well, he was lucky that he didn't have to contend with the 2024 version of Bobby Witt Jr.

Nobody should need to be sold on the Kansas City Royals shortstop as a superstar. He was the sport's No. 1 prospect when he debuted in 2022, and he produced a 20-20 season that year and then a 30-30 season in 2023. This year, he was an All-Star for the first time.

Yet the 24-year-old Witt was notably not voted in as the AL's starting shortstop (Gunnar Henderson), and his name was conspicuously absent from the league's best-selling jerseys. I daresay he's underrated, and players can only become underrated by being underseen.

So, let's take a moment to see what Witt is doing for the Royals in 2024:

• 162 H: 1st in MLB
• 99 R: 1st in MLB
• .349 AVG: 1st in MLB
• .394 OBP: T-3rd in MLB
• .606 SLG: 3rd in MLB
• 1.000 OPS: 4th in MLB

There's also Witt's .409 average at Kauffman Stadium, which is the highest home average since Barry Bonds in 2004. And with 22 home runs and 25 stolen bases, he's the first AL/NL player to record at least 20 homers and 20 steals in each of his first three seasons.

"He's the face of baseball moving forward, or at least part of the face along with a lot of other good players, and I don't say that lightly," Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said recently.

Everything Witt is doing is going toward a good cause. The Royals hold the AL's third wild-card slot at 64-52. If they keep holding it, they'll make the playoffs for the first time since they won the World Series in 2015.

According to DraftKings, the odds still favor Judge to win the AL MVP by a large margin. He's currently a massive -1100 favorite, with Witt Jr. at +550. The Yankees captain boasts an MLB-best 1.147 OPS and is up to 41 home runs, putting him 21 shy of his AL-record 62 from 2022. The New York Yankees, meanwhile, are tied atop the AL East at 68-47.

There's a lot of season still left to go, however. And while that statement obviously cuts both ways, it's not hard to argue for Witt over Judge as the AL MVP.

In fact, it's quite easy.

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Let's Not Go to WAR Over This

One thing we're not going to do is use wins above replacement to settle this debate.

I'm taking this stance partly out of protest. WAR is a useful tool, but the degree to which it's infected the MVP voting over the last decade is a bit much. "Most Valuable Player" has almost become synonymous with "Guy with the Most WAR," and that sucks.

Besides, WAR isn't much help in this scenario.

Judge (7.8) has the edge for Baseball Reference, but only by 0.2 WAR over Witt (7.6). The latter (8.1) has the edge at FanGraphs, but only by 0.3 WAR over the former (7.8).

The best thing to do, then, is to consider each player's merits. This is especially hard to do with Witt because, as MLB so succinctly captured, he's just so darn good at everything:

That Judge's and Witt's WAR are nonetheless as close as they are has a lot to do with how overpowering Judge has been at the plate. Beyond his OPS and his home runs, it's there in his league-best marks for Batting Runs and Runs Created.

But is Judge really that much of a better offensive player than Witt?

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The Case for Witt's Offense

Judge has gotten on base 31 more times than Witt, including by way of 19 more homers. But while those advantages are significant, the two are otherwise closer than you might think.

Witt (65) and Judge (67) are about even in extra-base hits, and Witt (281) even has the edge on Judge (280) for total bases. Plus, Witt has Judge beat by 20 stolen bases.

Witt clearly understands that the whole point is to get around the bases, no matter how you do it. And that he's scored 99 runs, as a result, isn't merely impressive in a vacuum. Those account for 18 percent of all the runs the Royals have scored, whereas no other player is responsible for more than 16 percent of his team's runs.

What Witt is not is the RBI man that Judge has been. The Yankee captain has driven in 104 runs, putting him 20 above Witt and comfortably in the lead among all hitters.

However, there is a good reason why Witt seems to have had a nose for the clutch hit.

On average, he's faced higher-pressure situations than Judge and batted with a total of 254 runners on base. Out of those plate appearances, 62 runs were scored.

That's a rate of 24.4 percent, the highest of any hitter who's batted with at least 100 runners on base.

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The Case for Witt's Defense

Defense is always going to be the less sexy element of any MVP debate involving two-position players, but it is important.

In addition to bases and runs, outs are the other major currency in baseball, after all. And for infielders, chances to make outs can pile up almost as fast as at-bats on the offensive side.

And for a team like the Royals, a good defense is not merely a nice to have. Their pitching staff largely forgoes the strikeout, resulting in an AL-high 4,182 defensive chances for the team's fielders. Witt has personally handled 433 of those, the fourth-most among AL shortstops.

Bad defense on his part would be a hard thing for the Royals to live with on a day-to-day basis. Instead, Defensive Runs Saved rates him as the fourth-best shortstop in MLB, while Outs Above Average has him as the second-best defender at any position.

For his part, Judge does have some years as an elite defender in his track record. But in 2024, he's basically hovering around average for a team that prefers the strikeout anyway.

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The Case for Witt's Narrative

Even with all of this said, to distill Witt's MVP case down to his statistics is to miss the point. Or at least, only get half of it.

There's a story at play here, too. And it's pretty cool.

Which brings us to what I swear will be the last numbers I'm going to throw at you, though I'm going to put them in "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" disguises:

• Thing 1: From 71.2 to 99.4
• Thing 2: From 13.1 to 60.2

In focus here are FanGraphs playoff odds from the start of the season vs. the current day. Thing 1 is for the Yankees, whose chances have increased 40 percent. Thing 2 is for the Royals, whose chances have increased 360 percent.

In other words, the Yankees are where they were expected to be, while the Royals are where anyone could have only hoped they would be.

Even setting aside the payroll disparity between these two clubs—hint: it's huge—there's power in the transformation the Royals have undertaken. It's certainly apparent in the attendance gains at Kauffman Stadium. The fans ostensibly show up to see the Royals, generally, but it's no secret that they want to see Witt, specifically.

As one fan told Mike Lupica of MLB.com: "You never know if a kid like this is going to come along. But if you're a baseball fan, what keeps you going is the hope that someday a player like Bobby will come along again."

As Witt has had a better three-year start than literally any Royal in history, it's a miracle that a player like him has come around even once. And now more than ever, it sure feels like he's come for the express purpose of restoring the franchise's glory.

For this, he already deserves the MVP. And the longer he keeps it up, the more he'll deserve it.

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.