This is the Problem

This might shock you, but the General Manager of the Detroit Tigers, Dave Dombrowski, thinks Miguel Cabrera should be the MVP. When making his case, he had this to say about advanced statistics like Wins Above Replacement that prefer Mike Trout over Cabrera:

"You can use WAR stats and all of that, but when people used to talk about most valuable player, it used to be, ‘Take that player away from the club and see where that club would be.’ You take Miguel Cabrera out of our lineup right now, and you see where we would be.”

That's literally exactly what WAR is.

This is Wikipedia's definition of WAR, with the most relevant part in bold:

"Wins Above Replacement, commonly known as WAR, is a non-standardized sabermetric baseball statistic that is used to show how many more wins a player would give a team as opposed to a "replacement level", or minor league/bench player at that position."

This is the problem with people who discount WAR when it prefers Mike Trout over Cabrera. They throw it away without even trying to understand what it actually is. Even General Managers of baseball teams.