2014 was probably the worst year of Mike Trout’s three year DTBL career. His batting average dipped below .300 for the first time and he stole fewer than half as many bases as he had in each of his first two seasons. That’s not to suggest this wasn’t a great season for the Mavericks’ young phenom. He was still an elite player in every sense of the word. But I think I can safely say he is the first player to ever win his first MVP award in the worst season of his career to date (not counting rookies). It definitely hasn’t happened in this league. Mike Trout is the 2014 DTBL Most Valuable Player.
Trout remains baseball’s best total package. His combination of hitting for average and power, base running, speed and fielding ability is unmatched. But prior to this year, he had been unable to grab the MVP award in the DTBL or the American League, mostly because of a guy named Miguel Cabrera. Cabrera understandably won the MVP award in this league the previous two years because Trout’s main prowess over him, his defensive ability, plays no role in fantasy baseball. But Cabrera didn’t have quite the same success at the plate this year, leaving the door open for Trout and others.
Trout led the DTBL in batting PAR (7.91) and runs scored (115). His 36 home runs and 111 RBI were career highs and ranked third and second respectively in the league this year. It was batting average (.287) and stolen bases (16) where he took a bit of a step backwards from previous seasons, but even those numbers are well above league average. He was easily the Mavericks best offensive player again this year, leading them in AVG, HR, RBI and R. He was largely responsible for keeping the Mavericks offense among the best in the league on their way to a slightly disappointing third place finish. Yet the Mavericks can now claim the league’s best hitter and pitcher for 2014 with Trout joining Clayton Kershaw as award winners.
Ever since the Mavericks selected Trout with their second round pick in 2012, he has proven to be one of the biggest steals in DTBL Draft history. In his brief career, he has put up gaudy numbers: .313 with 93 home runs, 97 stolen bases, 291 runs batted in and 352 runs scored in just three seasons. He has now finished in the top four of the MVP vote in each of his seasons. And this is the second award he has won, along with the unanimous selection as Rookie of the Year in 2012. He is also only 23 years old, so it would be very surprising if he wasn’t in the running for this award many, many times down the road. He and Kershaw figure to keep the Mavericks in the title hunt pretty much every year for the foreseeable future.
It wasn’t quite a unanimous selection of Trout for MVP. He received nine of ten first place votes for a total of 97 points. Since I leave it up to each of you as to whether or not you wish to have your votes made public, I’m not going to say who didn’t have Trout #1, except I’ll give you a pretty big hint by saying it’s probably the last person you would have guessed. Although Trout wasn’t unanimous, his margin of victory was quite large. The next four closest competitors were more than 60 points behind, but within six points of each other. The Jackalope’s suddenly filthy-rich Giancarlo Stanton came in second place with 35 points despite only receiving one second place vote. The Naturals’ Victor Martinez received the lone first place vote that didn’t go to Trout, perhaps due to his value over every other catcher in the league. V-Mart was left off three ballots and finished with 34 points. The player who finished just behind Trout in batting PAR, Demigods second baseman Jose Altuve, only received a pair of second place votes and was left off four ballots, causing him to finish fourth with 32 points. Finally, the Cougars break-out star, outfielder Michael Brantley, rounded out the top five with 29 points, also receiving a pair of second place votes. Besides Trout, the voting was really all over the place. Even one player who didn’t finish in the top five, Miguel Cabrera, received a second place vote. Trout was the only player who appeared on all ten ballots.
Click here to see the full Most Valuable Player award voting results.
Usually, this MVP article is my last article of the year. But that’s not the plan this year. I’m going to start working on updating PAR numbers for previous seasons and will probably write about some of my findings along the way, particularly if I see the need to adjust my formulas. I would also like to chronicle the league PAR totals for each year and maybe take a look at how well the MVP and Cy Young voting meshed with the PAR results in past years. In addition to that, I also have other site enhancements planned for this winter. So be sure to check back on occasion. But until next time, have a great winter!