Shohei Ohtani deserves MVP, but Mets' Francisco Lindor finishes a distinguished second
Mets' Francisco Lindor hits a grand slam against the Philadelphia Phillies in the Game 4 of the NLDS at Citi Field on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
In the National League MVP race, no one delivered a better closing argument than Francisco Lindor, whose game-winning homer in the ninth inning, on the final (bonus) day of the regular season, shocked Atlanta and personally put the Mets in the playoffs.
How could anything, or anyone, be more valuable than what Lindor provided that afternoon at Truist Park, with his team’s October dreams hanging in the balance? With the stakes so high, on the biggest of late September stages, Lindor’s dramatic homer — yet another example of his MVP-caliber performance all year — was nearly enough to to make this BBWAA voter reconsider his ballot and flip-flop the Mets’ shortstop with the supernatural Shohei Ohtani.
That’s how close I felt this competition was — or at least should’ve been. Alas, the clock just ran out on Lindor. Little did we know at the time that he was just warming up for even more heroics in October, to spur the Mets’ exhilarating romp through the playoffs. But the MVP award is based strictly on a player’s body of work during the regular season — ballots are due before the first pitch of the wild-card round — and in this particular year, Ohtani’s historic impact for the the Dodgers (even without throwing a pitch!) was just too great for Lindor to ultimately nudge aside at the finish line.
Ohtani wound up winning this third MVP in four years, sweeping all 30 first-place votes again for his third unanimous selection, and became the first full-time DH to take home the trophy. Lindor was a solid runner-up, earning 23 second-place votes and seven for third.
“My goal was to be able to pitch and contribute offensively,” Ohtani said Thursday night through an interpreter on a conference call with reporters. “And the fact that I knew I wasn’t going to be able to pitch this season just made me focus more on my offensive game. Fortunately I was able to produce.”
Had Ohtani not put up such video game numbers en route to becoming the charter member of baseball’s 50-50 club, thanks to his 54 homers and 59 stolen bases, simply being a fearsome DH could have ceded the MVP to Lindor’s all-around brilliance instead. Going by the offensive stats, which accounts for the colossal share of value in today’s game, Ohtani was the runaway winner in those categories.
Ohtani hit 15 more homers than anyone else in the NL, his 130 RBIs were 18 better the the runner-up and his .310 batting average fell just four points shy (behind San Diego's Luis Arraez) of giving him the Triple Crown. In stacking up those 59 stolen bases, Ohtani was caught only four times, and his 1.036 OPS far outpaced Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna (.925).
But this wasn’t about Ohtani piling up empty-calorie numbers for months on end. While it’s true he only played half the time — Ohtani was limited to DH duties as he recovered from last year’s Tommy John surgery — the banged-up Dodgers needed every swing from Ohtani, over his 159 games, to stay atop the NL West. Ohtani wasn’t just a $700 million cog in the big-spending L.A. machine, he was the engine all season long, as the hurting Dodgers were tied for the second-most players on the IL (26) and led the majors in days missed (2,158) to those injuries.
When Mookie Betts, a former MVP himself, missed nearly two months with a broken hand, Ohtani moved into the vacated leadoff spot and posted a 1.024 OPS during those 44 games, with 16 homers, 36 RBIs and 32 runs scored. In September, as the Dodgers fended off the Padres down the stretch, Ohtani came through with his best month, hitting .393 with 10 homers, 32 RBIs and a 1.225 OPS.
For those reasons, even the old-school, anti-DH crowd should find it impossible to diminish Ohtani’s value based on the fact that he never wore a glove this season. What team wouldn’t covet Ohtani’s plate production above all else?
That’s what Lindor was up against, and yet he still mounted a serious threat to Ohtani’s grip on first place — in my mind anyway. Lindor’s advantage was more from a philosophical standpoint, as he combined his own superb offensive performance (33 HRs, 107 runs, .844 OPS) with Gold Glove quality defense at a premium position.
Lindor’s 16 outs above average (OAA) — a metric that takes into account a number of defensive factors, including range — placed third in the NL, and his manager Carlos Mendoza often mentioned how that skill set made the Mets’ infield around him better as a whole. Also, it was Lindor’s exceptional glovework that helped give the Mets’ shortstop to a 7.8 fWAR, behind only Ohtani’s 9.1.
“Being on the field, and posting up day-in and day-out, I take a lot of pride in it,” Lindor said Thursday night during the MLB Network broadcast.
At the start of September, Lindor actually had a higher fWAR than Ohtani, but two things contributed to that catch-all metric going the other way over the final few weeks of the season. As previously mentioned, Ohtani was Superman that month, a ridiculous hot streak that included his 6-for-6, three-homer, 10 RBIs game against the Marlins. As for Lindor, he suffered the misfortune of missing nearly half of September due to a debilitating back condition that suddenly became unplayable, putting a serious dent in his hopes for staying close with Ohtani down the stretch.
The final tally says Ohtani won the MVP in a landslide. But anyone who watched Lindor propel the Mets this season, excelling as the two-way star that even Ohtani couldn’t be, knows it was way closer than the votes suggested.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
