The MVP excuses are already flowing after Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh multi-homer games

In 2017, a rookie Aaron Judge clubbed 52 home runs for a playoff-bound Yankees team that climbed out of the middle of the American League the year prior to eventually surge to the ALCS. A hulking rookie coming off hitting .179 in 84 at-bats in his unveiling would normally be the most exciting story in the league, and that narrative sounds like a guaranteed MVP ... for any non-Yankee, of course.

Instead, writers looked for any excuse they could to ignore that Judge had both the statistical and story-telling advantage. Ultimately, the vote went to Jose Altuve. After all, Altuve had paid his due by seventh MLB season. He hit .346! Judge posted a .284 average. He put up a league-leading 8.1 bWAR to Judge's ... well, 8.1 also. The Astros won the American League West. They don't usually do that! The Yankees - again, ignoring the fact that they were plainly entering a new era - only won the Wild Card. That's standard practice.

Altuve's season was remarkable. You could make a case for it. But it was no surprise that, in a head-to-head, the league's writers sought to find reasons to vote against Judge and the pinstripes, not for him.

Judge, of course, did get his MVP vengeance eventually. His 62-homer campaign in 2022 topped a standard, incredible, playoff-missing season from Shohei Ohtani. In 2024, he was undeniable, posting another 10.8 bWAR to rival 2022. And now, he's on the other side of MVP fatigue in a head-to-head dominance competition with another AL West foe: Cal Raleigh of the Seattle Mariners.

Raleigh has been stunning. If Judge were not in the league, he'd be the runaway MVP. If this were 1980, and some now-quantifiable things were still left incalculable, he'd be the runaway MVP. But, in the modern era, the head-to-head comes down to, "Would you rather default to the player with the substantially higher WAR (a measure of, literally, value), or would you rather vote for the better and more shocking story?"

After both players went yard twice on Wednesday - Judge against the White Sox, Raleigh to reach 60 blasts against the Rockies - it's no surprise that many tweets from experts about the race boiled down to, "There are two legitimate candidates for AL MVP this year. Here's why I'm voting for the worse one."

Yankees' Aaron Judge, Mariners' Cal Raleigh go head-to-head in MVP race with dueling multi-home run games

Suddenly, a lot of people are "dying on that hill" that Judge's 177-point OPS advantage isn't indicative of the superior season.

Raleigh's Mariners were, at one point, hanging on at the bottom of the American League Wild Card picture. The catcher's pair of home runs on Wednesday - and, again, he reached 60 - cemented their AL West crown. That certainly changes things, especially for old-school voters.

But Judge's two home runs, while the Yankees scoreboard-watched the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday, also helped erase a 1-0 deficit and force a tie in the AL East, undoing a good deal of earlier malfeasance by the Bombers.

The two incredible seasons are similar in their ebbs and flows. But the Mariners' franchise history makes their success feel more improbable. That, too, has been used as a bargaining chip by those aggrieved in Raleigh's direction.

VALID THING TO SAY: "There are two incredible players carrying red-hot teams in the American League playoff field this year, and either could win MVP."

INVALID THING TO SAY: "There's not a world in which this man isn't the Most Valuable Player."

There is a world. It's this world. It's the world we live in.

As someone who was forced to fight for the importance of the number "62" in the war of words against Ohtani in 2022, I completely understand the old-school baseball urge to seek the most exciting narrative - the player who "owned the season" - and defy a certain set of numbers in order to make that preferred case. But it would be nice if those people would simply say, "I'm sorry, but voting for Raleigh is more exciting to me," rather than all of a sudden gaining an appreciation for the old-school rigors of the catching position, worrying for the first time ever that WAR might not be all-encompassing.

It would be also nice if those people would plainly say, "Yes, even though 2017 Judge did something just as crazy as 2025 Raleigh ... come on. It's the Yankees."