LA Angels: 3 MVP candidates competing with Shohei Ohtani

Gerrit Cole is on a mission to break the trend of pitchers not winning MVPs.

The last pitcher to win an MVP was Clayton Kershaw in 2014, and the last pitcher to win an AL MVP was Justin Verlander in 2011.

It’s tough to win an AL MVP as a pitcher. National League pitchers don’t have to worry about facing a DH anywhere near as much, and they get a free out in every lineup most games.

Gerrit Cole‘s just different. His fWAR is at 2.8, a full game higher than the next AL starting pitcher.

He’s third in the AL in ERA (1.81), second in the AL in K/9 with 12.80 Ks, and second in BB/9 with 1.11 BBs. He’s allowing an absurdly low .191 batting average against him.

Nobody can hit Cole. Nobody can hit Ohtani either, but obviously Cole is a better pitcher right now.

Not only are those numbers better, but Cole can start more games. Ohtani can’t start every fifth game due to potentially fatiguing his arm. That being said, Cole obviously isn’t a full-time DH like Ohtani.

Cole has absolutely entered MVP conversation, but when it comes down to true value, even an Ace like Cole is going to struggle to compete with someone who can both pitch like an Ace and rake at the same time.

It’s tough to be more ‘valuable’ than somebody as versatile as Ohtani, but especially when you’re a starting pitcher, and the voters have been telling you that your position is not as ‘valuable’ as position players when looking at the way they’ve been voting.

That’s why this next and final candidate who will be competing with Ohtani for MVP, like Guerrero, is a position player.

The American League hasn’t been the same without our own LA Angels outfielder Mike Trout.

Doesn’t that speak to how ‘valuable’ of a player Mike Trout is? The LA Angel has won an MVP Award in a year where he’s battled injuries (2019), so as long as he’s in the conversation for best player in the MLB, he’s in the running for the MVP. And Trout is certainly still in the conversation for best player on the planet.

He’s tied with Guerrero for third in the AL with a .333 batting average, he’s leading the league with a .466 on-base percentage, and he’s second in slugging percentage at .624. He has a 1.090 OPS (2nd in the AL), and nobody in the league has a higher BB% than Trout’s unbelievable 18.5% BB%. To be able to walk that often while slugging that high is incredible.

Something else that’s incredible is that despite missing the time that Trout’s missed since his injury, he’s still third in fWAR among position players. His fWAR is 2.4. His lowest fWAR in a year he won the MVP was his 8.3 fWAR in 2014.

It’ll be tough to get back to that considering he’s going to be out another five to seven weeks.

Betting against Trout is usually not a good idea, however, so Angels fans very well may end up having the top two AL MVP candidates on their own team.

Trout was still in the top three in MVP odds as of May 20th. There’s no counting him out. He’s going to be making noise as soon as he returns to the centerfield grass.