A Note About the AL MVP Race

On Tuesday night, Miguel Cabrera announced his assault on the Triple Crown. His two home runs gave him 40 on the season, which trails Josh Hamilton by two. His six RBIs give him a commanding lead in that category, 129 to 123 over Hamilton. Cabrera also leads the AL batting race with a .333 average, six points better than Mike Trout's .327.

So if Cabrera out-homers Josh Hamilton over the next two weeks, while maintaining his lead in the RBI and batting average departments, he will win the first Triple Crown since Carl Yastrzemski did it in 1967. If this happens, it seems as though Cabrera will be a mortal lock to win the MVP over Mike Trout. That's how historic this achievement would be.

However, there's another statistical achievement in play that should be considered. BaseballReference.com tracks the history of single-season Wins Above Replacement figures. WAR, unlike the Triple Crown, is an all-encompassing statistic that does its best to quantify a player's all-around value--offense, defense, baserunning--in one simple number. This stands in direct contrast to the Triple Crown, which, despite its aura, only measures home runs, runs batted in, and batting average.

In the history of baseball, only 19 players have ever accumulated 10 WAR in a season. It's the holy grail of the statistic. If you're interested, those players are:

Babe Ruth
Rogers Hornsby
Carl Yastrzemski
Barry Bonds
Lou Gehrig
Cal Ripken Jr.
Honus Wagner
Ty Cobb
Mickey Mantle
Willie Mays
Joe Morgan
Stan Musial
Ted Williams
Robin Yount
Lou Boudreau
Jimmie Foxx
Eddie Collins
Alex Rodriguez
Sammy Sosa

That's 16 Hall of Famers, plus three more (Bonds, Rodriguez, Sosa) who may one day get there.

This year, a 20th player joined this exclusive group. He currently sits at 10.3 WAR and the season isn't even over yet. The player isn't Cabrera. It's Mike Trout.

Cabrera could win the Triple Crown by a landslide and it still wouldn't matter. Not only has Trout has been the most valuable player in baseball this year; he's achieved a season of dominance that only 19 Hall of Fame-caliber players have ever achieved before. And he's done it in only 125 games so far, thanks to missing the first month of the season through no fault of his own.

Trout is the MVP. Any other result would be a joke.