DJ LeMahieu placing 3rd in MVP voting proves stat nerds can shut up forever

Yankees star DJ LeMahieu finished third in the MVP voting in 2020.

Ah, yes, Mike Trout’s WAR will live on in infamy as the defining resume builder that has won him three MVPs (and four second-place finishes). But not for New York Yankees star DJ LeMahieu! Why would that matter for him when it came down to the MVP voting?

LeMahieu finished third in this year’s MVP race. He somehow wasn’t a finalist in 2019, but he finished fourth in the voting. We can cry Yankee bias all we want but is that really going to get us anywhere? We know at this point that anyone on the Yankees competing for an individual accolade needs to make it so convincing that a vote against them would cause the baseball world to burn.

The sad part is that we knew LeMahieu wasn’t going to win this time around. But somehow we’re surprised that the voting was ridiculously lopsided despite every writer seemingly citing advanced stats as the be-all end-all at the end of each season.

How’s this for perspective: LeMahieu got the same amount of eighth-place votes as he did first-place votes. If that doesn’t prove there’s some sort of bias in the voting process, we don’t know what will. This has the feels of Aaron Judge getting blown out of the water by Jose Altuve in 2017.

The Machine captured the AL Batting Title in 2020 with a .364 average to become the first player in history to win the award in both leagues. On top of that, he led the AL in OPS (1.011), OPS+ (177), wRC+ (177) and wOBA (.429) in addition to taking home the Silver Slugger award. His 2.8 WAR among AL position players was tied for first with Jose Abreu, who handily took home the MVP honors.

If DJ has the upper hand in all of those while Abreu had him significantly in home runs, RBI and ISO while skating by in runs scored, how does the White Sox slugger get 20 MORE first-place votes? Is there a new batch of stats we don’t know about awaiting approval from the baseball math committee that DJ lost?

Are we crazy? Seriously, it’s OK if you say yes. We don’t mind. We didn’t think LeMahieu was the clear first-place choice, but we for sure didn’t expect that drastic disparity in third place.

LeMahieu missing 10 games due to injury could’ve very well hurt his case and we wouldn’t even disagree with that notion because it was a 60-game shortened season, but how in the world does Ramirez finish that far ahead of him? The Cleveland Indians slugger played in eight more games and ranked behind LeMahieu in just about every advanced stat.

Let’s see them side by side:

• WAR — DJ (2.8) vs JR (2.3)
• OPS — DJ (1.011) vs JR (.993)
• OPS+ — DJ (177) vs JR (163)
• wRC+ — DJ (177) vs JR (163)
• wOBA — DJ (.429) vs JR (.415)
• ISO — DJ (.226) vs JR (.429)
• wRAA — DJ (19.8) vs JR (20.3)
• DRS — DJ (0) vs JR (-6)
• WAA — DJ (2.3) vs JR (1.6)

Ramirez bested LeMahieu in runs scored, homers and RBI in addition to those few advanced stats. We’re really not sure what we’re missing here (please help if you know!) but the next time you get into an MVP discussion and someone tries to convince you that advance stats reign supreme, just pull out this receipt.

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