Kris Bryant is almost surely not going to win the 2017 NL MVP. Heck, I haven’t even seen his name suggested by the main national baseball writers and analysts as one of the contenders for the award.
The names you hear as the leading contenders are Giancarlo Stanton, Paul Goldschmidt, Charlie Blackmon, Nolan Arenado, Anthony Rendon, and Joey Votto. These are all tremendous, deserving candidates that you can’t really go wrong with as a voter, and Stanton would even have my — nonexistent! — vote at the moment.
But Bryant is absolutely deserving of the award himself, again.
Bryant won the NL MVP last year, and did you know the Cubs’ third baseman is putting together pretty much the same production in 2017?
Bryant in 2016:
.292/.385/.554, 39 HR, 102 RBI, 121 R, 8 SB, 10.7 BB%, 22.0 K%, .396 wOBA, 148 wRC+.
Bryant in 2017:
.297/.411/.543, 29 HR, 73 RBI, 110 R, 7 SB, 14.4 BB%, 18.9 K%, .402 wOBA, 148 wRC+.
Bryant has made some incredible adjustments as an overall hitter; he’s striking out much less and walking much more. His contact percentage is now 78.2% after being 73.3% last year, and it’s up a ridiculous 11.9% from his rookie season in 2015. His on-base percentage — the single most important offensive skill — is up 26 points from last year and ranks fourth in the NL.
His slugging percentage is down 11 points and he has 10 fewer homers than last season with six games to go. But his overall offensive production is identical by wRC+, and even higher this season by wOBA. He’s a different hitter, but he’s been the same hitter by productivity at the end of the day, and his strikeout, walk, and contact improvements figure to be beneficial for him as an overall hitter going forward.
Did you know that Bryant even ranks first in the NL in fWAR (FanGraphs’ WAR) at 6.8?
FanGraphs’ metrics have Bryant as the third-most valuable NL offensive player, 32nd-most valuable NL defensive player, and he ranks fifth in the NL for his baserunning value added (BsR), his most underrated skill (something he showed off in the World Series). These skills all add up to him currently being ranked first in their WAR metric.
How about what other sites’ metrics think? Baseball Reference’s WAR ranks Bryant fourth among NL position players at 6.3-WAR (he’s third in their Offensive WAR) behind Stanton, Votto, and Arenado. And Baseball Prospectus’ WAR (WARP) also has Bryant fourth in the NL at 6.85-WAR, behind Stanton, Votto, and Blackmon.
So, everywhere you look, WAR thinks Bryant is a top-four player in the NL. What things are going to work against Bryant?
Well, the Cubs’ season, for one. They’ve been the team everyone thought they would be in the second half and are on the verge of clinching another NL Central title. But they were very disappointing in the first half with a 43-45 record that had them 5.5 games behind the Milwaukee Brewers at the All-Star break. Last year, the 103-win, eventual championship-winning Cubs were the story in the majors. And Bryant was their best player, just one year removed from all the hype of him being the game’s top prospect. This year, the Cubs are down the list of stories in the NL, what with Stanton’s chase for 60 homers, the Diamondbacks (Goldschmidt) and Rockies (Arenado and Blackmon) surprising, the Dodgers being viewed as the Cubs of last year, etc.
Bryant’s low RBI totals (73) will also be taken into consideration by many voters, even though it’s largely a team stat dependent on sequence and circumstance. However, there probably is at least something to Bryant’s low RBI numbers, given that he’s struggled in high leverage situations (something FanGraphs’ Jeff Sullivan went into detail about last month). Bryant ranks dead-last in the NL in FanGraphs’ “clutch” metric, though Stanton and Goldschmidt rank second and third-worst there themselves (and Aaron Judge is the very worst there in MLB), so how much should we penalize Bryant if we’re also considering Stanton and Goldschmidt for the award? He’s also been better in that department lately, like with this game-winning homer vs the Brewers last week, a huge game for NL Central purposes.
Bryant hammers a go-ahead homer in the 10th against the Brewers to make it 5-3 pic.twitter.com/uizL8TVcWI
— Heart of MLB (@HeartofMLB) September 22, 2017
Bryant also ranks 19th in the NL for win probability added, an area you’d like to see an MVP candidate a bit higher, but it’s not necessarily a “bad” ranking either (it’s ahead of Rendon, for example).
Overall, Bryant’s case is a pretty good one (and perhaps a surprising one to many), with his numbers essentially matching last season’s when he was the slam-dunk NL MVP. While he’s quite unlikely to repeat as MVP, he belongs in the conversation, and he hasn’t really been to this point. Hopefully voters at least dig deep into Bryant’s numbers to recognize the terrific, somehow under-the-radar season he’s having.
