Author: Alex Devorsetz (alexdevorsetz2025@u.northwestern.edu)

This has been an incredible season of baseball. From Albert Pujols’s resurgence, to the trade of Juan Soto, to Paul Goldschmidt solidifying his Hall of Fame case, 2022 has been a year to remember in the MLB. However, what was undeniably at the forefront of this season was quite possibly the most incredible, impressive, and unique MVP race in MLB history, featuring the Angels’ Shohei Ohtani and the Yankees’ Aaron Judge. Both players had two of the best seasons the MLB has ever seen.

Aaron Judge had a 207 wRC+, which is the 17th-best single-season wRC+ by a player with at least 600 PAs. Only four of those performances were achieved after 1947, which was the first year of MLB integration. Of those four seasons, three belong to Barry Bonds, hitting the benchmarks in 2001, 2002 and 2004, and the other to Mickey Mantle in  1957. This other-worldly wRC+ comes without mentioning that Judge hit 62 home runs, passing Roger Maris to become the most in AL history and the most by a steroid-free player. He had 16 stolen bases with an 84.2% success rate, and had 5.0 Fielding Runs while playing the majority of his innings in center field. In practically any season, 2022 Judge would be a near-unanimous MVP pick.

However, we live in the Age of Ohtani. Shohei Ohtani has redefined what a baseball player can be. He, like Judge, is a historic player, but he achieves this in a very different way. Ohtani’s combination of hitting and pitching in the MLB at a high level in the same season can only be compared to Babe Ruth, and even that isn’t good enough, as Ruth never had a season where he qualified as both a hitter and a pitcher. Ohtani deservingly won a unanimous MVP in 2021, and he’s practically replicated that season in 2022. His hitting, fielding, and baserunning have all dipped slightly, dropping from a 150 wRC+ to a 142 wRC+, from 2 DRS to 1 DRS, and from 26 SBs at a 72.2% success rate to 11 SBs at a 55% success rate, but he made up for it with improved pitching. Ohtani’s got his ERA- down from 72 to 58, his FIP- from 80 to 59, his SIERA from 3.61 to 2.73, and his K-BB% rose from 21.0% to 26.5%, all while pitching more innings in 2022 than he did in 2021. That combination of top-tier hitting and pitching is absurd. In practically any season, 2022 Ohtani would be a near-unanimous MVP pick.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you view it), 2022 Judge and 2022 Ohtani are in the same league. Two incredible players vying for one MVP award, leaving to us ways in which we must compare them. There really is no way to do this while pleasing everyone. You can’t simply use WPA, as many believe that to be an inaccurate judge of value. You could use cumulative WAR, but many dislike that method as they believe that it overcorrects for Ohtani’s fielding value, or lack thereof. And as much as some would like to, you can’t just hand Ohtani the award for pulling off double-duty, as it is still possible for a pure position player to be more valuable. 

Nevertheless, there is a solution. Recently, I stumbled upon a tweet from Trent Rush that presented an interesting idea — comparing the value of Ohtani’s pitching and Judge’s offensive lead. Now Rush doesn’t deduce anything magical here, simply posting stats and leaving it up to a fan vote to decide who is superior (an exercise that has definitely never gone wrong before), and likewise home runs and RBI’s alone can’t account for Judge’s impact.

A more scientific method might be to find the differences between Judge and Ohtani’s  values as a positional player holistically, which is exactly what I’m going to do here. I’m going to implement this idea in a way that gives a more complete view of the competition, which is by finding the differences between their values as a positional player holistically. I will also use a couple comparisons in order to visualize the comparisons better. Once again, I’m avoiding WAR in this analysis due to its inaccuracies in judging Ohtani’s fielding value. Let’s get into it: 

AS PITCHERS

We can start with the easy part of the comparison, which is pitching. Ohtani has finished this season with 166.0 IP, 2.33 ERA, 2.40 FIP, 1.012 WHIP, 26.5 K-BB%, 2.73 SIERA, 59 ERA-, and 58 FIP- as a pitcher. Judge, like most baseball players,  doesn’t pitch, so I’m going to find a pitcher with similar stats, particularly IP, ERA-, and FIP- to use on the pitcher end of the comparison. Unfortunately, in 2022 there are no pitchers who really match those numbers that well, so we’ll have to look back to previous seasons in order to find a comparison. By scanning through every pitching season of the 21st century, I could only find two that were closely comparable:

2003 Curt Schilling: who threw 168.0 IP with a 2.95 ERA, 2.66 FIP, 1.048 WHIP, 24.1% K-BB%, 2.67 SIERA, 65 ERA-, and 59 FIP-

2017 Stephen Strasburg: who threw 175.1 IP with a 3.27 ERA, 3.37 FIP, 57 ERA-, 1.015 WHIP, 22.4% K-BB%, 3.37 SIERA, 57 ERA-, and 62 FIP-

These were two great seasons by two great pitchers, but they lacked the volume needed to win their respective Cy Youngs, which is likely what will happen with Ohtani. Regardless, these seasons by Schilling and Strasburg are the most comparable to 2022 Ohtani in terms of production and volume, so they’ll serve as our comparisons here to contextualize the difference between Ohtani and Judge

AS POSITIONAL PLAYERS

Now, it’s time for the tough part —comparing them as position players. Here are the major stats:

Aaron Judge ended the season with 86.1 Off, 0.8 Def, 2.1 BsR, and 84.0 Batting Runs.

Shohei Ohtani ended the season with 31.8 Off, -16.4 Def, 0.3 BsR, and 31.5 Batting Runs.

Thanks to this, we can get a more accurate idea of the position player that describes the difference between Judge and Ohtani. This position player would have an Off of 54.3, a Def of 17.2, a BsR of 1.8, and 52.5 Batting Runs (i.e. the difference between Judge and Ohtani’s stats). But we can go further. By finding the differences between Judge’s and Ohtani’s rate stats and adding them to the league-average stats, we can find the rate stats of this hypothetical player. By the end of the season, Judge’s .311 AVG is 38 points higher than Ohtani’s .273, his .425 OBP is 69 points higher than Ohtani’s .356, his .686 SLG is 167 points higher than Ohtani’s .519, his 1.111 OPS is 236 points higher than Ohtani’s .875, his .458 wOBA is 88 points higher than Ohtani’s .370, and his 207 wRC+ is 65 points higher than Ohtani’s 142 wRC+. 

A league-average hitter in 2022 slashes .243/.312/.395 with a .706 OPS, .310 wOBA, and 100 wRC+. Combining these factors, the difference between Judge and Ohtani is equal to a hypothetical player who slashes .281/.381/.562 with a .942 OPS, .398 wOBA, and 165 wRC+. In order to get a more complete comparison, we would also like this player to have a Def around 17.2 and a BsR around 1.8. Lucky for us, we have two fairly-accurate comparisons from this season.

First is Nolan Arenado. Arenado ended the season slashing .293/.358/.533 with a .891 OPS, .381 wOBA, and 151 wRC+. Unfortunately, his hitting is worse than our hypothetical difference-maker due to his major September slump, but that isn’t the primary reason Arenado was picked for a comparison. It’s his 13.5 Def, which is extremely comparable to the difference in defensive value between Judge and Ohtani. The voting results aren’t public yet, but it’s looking like Arenado will be an MVP finalist, maybe even receiving a few first-place votes. However, there are likely some that don’t love this selection of a comparison. There is a vocal group of people who believe that Ohtani’s Def should be closer to 0, believing that the 93 PAs he has taken as a pitcher neutralize the 573 PAs he has taken as a DH.

Fortunately we have a second comparison — Jose Altuve — who just finished an incredibly underrated season. He slashed .300/.387/.533 with a .921 OPS, .397 wOBA, and 164 wRC+. That wRC+ was fourth-best in the MLB this season, behind only Judge, Goldschmidt, and Yordan Alvarez, and it was the best of Altuve’s career, even better than his MVP season in 2017. What makes this comparison great is that Altuve ended the season with 1.6 Def, which practically matches up with our hypothetical difference if Ohtani’s Def was around zero rather than -16.4. The only slight shortcoming with this comparison is Altuve’s -1.5 BsR, which is slightly worse than the hypothetical player. Regardless, it would be a surprise if Altuve wasn’t in the top-7 in AL MVP voting, so the comparison is effective enough.

CONCLUSION

After all of these comparisons, there’s only one question left — who comes out on top? For me, this comparison made the AL MVP race significantly easier to comprehend. I believe that 2022 Arenado and 2022 Altuve are more valuable players than 2003 Schilling and 2017 Strasburg, and thus I believe that 2022 Judge is a more valuable baseball player than 2022 Ohtani. Admittedly, this method runs into an issue when it comes to the extra roster spot. However, I believe that the use of a 6-man rotation, the logical premise that the 14th-best pitcher on the active roster isn’t a massive factor, and the fact that Ohtani’s permanent use of the DH spot removes the Angels’ ability to give Trout and Rendon half-off days are enough to say this factor does not make up the difference between Arenado/Altuve and Schilling/Strasburg, and that’s without considering the fact that the difference between Judge and Ohtani from a position-player view is larger than what is quantified by Arenado/Altuve. This comparison isn’t perfect, but it is clear enough to provide an answer — Aaron Judge should be the 2022 AL MVP.