MVP Voting Underscores Brewers’ Lack of Star Power

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Photo: Paul Goldschmidt - Facebook

Paul Goldschmidt

Paul Goldschmidt, 2022 National League MVP

When the Baseball Writers Association of America announced the 2022 National League MVP this week it wasn’t a surprise that no Brewers were on the podium: The Cardinals had two of the three finalists, including eventual winner Paul Goldschmidt, and Padres third baseman Manny Machado rounded out the group of top contenders.

The Brewers’ complete absence from the discussion, however, was something of a surprise. 30 BBWAA members, two from each National League city, submitted a ballot of ten ranked candidates for consideration. This year 19 players received mention on at least one ballot, including members of eight teams, but no Brewers received so much as a 10th place mention. Even the Milwaukee chapter’s two voters couldn’t find room on their ballot for a player from the team they’d seen all year.

This was the first time the Brewers had been completely left out of MVP voting since 2017, and only the third time in the last 16 years. For the most part since climbing out of the organization’s dark ages in the mid-2000’s the Brewers have always had at least one of the sport’s brightest stars, but this season they did not.

That does not mean, of course, that the Brewers were completely bereft of impact talent in 2022. Corbin Burnes, who received MVP consideration during his Cy Young Award-winning season in 2021, was similarly productive across a much larger workload this year and likely merited some consideration. Willy Adames, who finished 16^th in the voting in 2021 despite playing the first 41 games of his season in the American League, traded some consistency for power in 2022 and hit 31 home runs. And, of course, 2018 MVP and 2019 runner-up Christian Yelich remains in Milwaukee and is a perennial threat to regain his previous form.

The Brewers’ lackluster finish to the season also may have impacted some of their individual stars’ award chances. There has been a longstanding debate about whether team success should be a factor in a player’s MVP candidacy, and in the American League three of the top contenders (Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout of the Angels and Xander Bogaerts of the Red Sox) and nine of the 22 players mentioned on at least one ballot came from teams that did not advance to the postseason. The opposite was true in the National League, however: 17 of the 19 players mentioned on MVP ballots were from one of the six playoff teams, with only Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara (who finished in tenth place) and Rockies reliever Daniel Bard (mentioned on one ballot) as exceptions.

Nonetheless, the Brewers’ present lack of star power stands out as a threat to their ability to contend going forward. Their absence of clear threats to take over a game is apparent in their performance in prime spots in the lineup:

• They ranked 17th out of 30 MLB teams in on-base plus slugging from the leadoff spot (.691), behind ten of the 12 playoff teams.
• They ranked 20th in OPS from the #2 spot (.723), again behind ten of 12 playoff teams.
• They ranked 22nd in OPS from the #3 spot (.726), trailing behind eleven of 12 playoff teams.
• They did rebound to rank 12th in OPS from the #4 spot (.776), where Andrew McCutchen and Hunter Renfroe were their most frequent contributors.

Once they got past the top three the Brewers were often better than many of their rivals. Their 7-9 hitters finished the season with a .702 OPS, fourth-best in baseball. Their lineup could have been an extremely deep and successful one if not for lackluster performance at the top.

Unfortunately, a lack of star power is one of the most difficult problems for a baseball team to solve. The Brewers are at best unlikely to seriously pursue any of the bona fide top of the order stars in free agency and pursuing a player of that caliber on the trade market often means creating a hole in the organization somewhere else. Nonetheless, the Brewers’ lack of a clear threat near the top of the lineup was one of their most visible weaknesses in 2022 and one of the biggest challenges they’ll need to address if they’re going to return to contention going forward.