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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: BWJ, MVP?
Vol. 17, No. 74
August 25, 2025
The thing about inner-circle Hall of Famers is that their down years are pretty good. Mookie Betts is a below-average hitter for the first time in his career, headed for full-season lows in just about everything, and still might end up a four-win player -- something he’s been in every full season of his career. Juan Soto has never been worth less than five wins in a full year. If we look at some younger players on that track, Fernando Tatis Jr. has a career low of 2.6 bWAR. Julio Rodriguez’s floor, in four seasons, is four wins.
Bobby Witt Jr. will never make a list like that. This is because as a rookie he was overmatched at shortstop and moved around the infield, so bad defensively that he ended up at 0.9 bWAR. I am pretty confident, though, that he meets the spirit of the idea. This season, getting absolutely no attention after finishing second in last year’s AL MVP voting, Witt has been one of the very best players in baseball.
Winning WARs (sorted by Baseball Reference WAR)
bWAR fWAR
Aaron Judge 6.8 7.3
Pete Crow-Armstrong 6.4 5.4
Cristopher Sanchez 6.2 4.7
Paul Skenes 6.1 5.4
Tarik Skubal 6.0 5.9
Bobby Witt Jr. 5.9 6.5
Cal Raleigh 5.7 7.3
Shohei Ohtani 5.6 7.1
Corey Seager 5.5 3.6
I don’t want to get into a WAR war today, so I’m running the two most popular variants. Aaron Judge has been the best player in baseball, and then there’s a group of others in the mix for second. Cal Raleigh’s value gap is the most controversial, as there’s a two-win difference between how the two systems see his defense. We have plenty of time in September to fight about framing stats and award voting.
No, my point today is to say that the AL MVP discussion, framed as being between two men for a long time, should be considered a three-man race. Bobby Witt Jr. isn’t having the offensive season he did a year ago, ranking 29th in MLB in wRC+, 19th in batting runs. After posting career bests in everything in 2024, he’s fallen short of those marks in 2025, striking out a little more, walking a little less, not hitting the ball quite as well. His swing decisions, as measured by Robert Orr’s SEAGER, are the same. He makes up ground everywhere else. Witt is a plus defender at shortstop, though getting more credit from FanGraphs than Reference. He’s one of the best baserunners in the game, both in terms of stealing bags (34 SB, 83% success rate) and taking extra bases on hits (56% of the time) without making baserunning outs (2).
He’s not doing any of this playing out the string, either. Witt has been the best player on a Royals team that’s 20-14 in the second half, within three games of the Mariners for the third wild-card slot, within four games of the Red Sox for the chance to host playoff games. In the second half, in fact, Witt has been the third-best player in the AL behind Nick Kurtz and Shea Langeliers, and tied with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. All games count the same, so I am not a fan of weighting the second half, or September, or any piece of the season more than others. That does become a point of issue in some MVP races, so let’s acknowledge that since the break, Witt, with 1.9 fWAR, has been worth more than Cal Raleigh (1.1) and Aaron Judge (0.3) combined. Witt has, in fact, outplayed both players since the start of June.
That’s interesting not because second-half WAR counts more, but because it shows how quickly a race can change. Witt has made up nearly two wins on Aaron Judge in five weeks (Judge was on the IL for some of that time), and almost one on Raleigh. Were he to do anything like that again over the next five weeks, which isn’t out of the question, he’d be right there with the two favorites statistically.
No one has to tell Witt how quickly these conversations can change. Heading into last September, Witt was second to Judge in AL WAR, but close enough -- despite Judge’s incredible offensive numbers -- that the MVP race was in doubt. Witt had a decent month, hitting .278/.371/.444 and doing everything else he does so well, but he couldn’t keep pace with Judge. So by the end of the season, we had a consensus 1-2 in the AL MVP voting.
WAR, in any form, is an excellent sorting tool, but it’s not precise inside of a win. If one player has two or three more WAR than another, we can safely say he’s better. Once you’re talking about differences of less than one WAR, though, you want to be careful. Right now, in both bWAR and fWAR, Judge, Raleigh, and Witt are separated by less than one WAR with five weeks to play. Because of the order of events, with Judge getting off to that massive start and Raleigh setting minor home-run records, the conversation has been about those two. For three months now, though, it’s Bobby Witt Jr. who has been the best player in the AL. By value, he should be mentioned right along with the other two as a top AL MVP candidate. This is now a three-man race.
