Are we witnessing the best non-MVP season ever?

Bobby Witt Jr. is probably not going to win this year's American League MVP Award. Let’s get that out of the way right up front.

That’s because no matter how great his season is – and it is great, already the best season in the entire history of the Royals, by at least one measure – there’s no combination of all-around excellence that’s going to overcome Aaron Judge challenging 60 homers and putting up a top-10 all-time batting year with the voters, assuming Judge does reach those marks. Even though Witt is a far superior defender to Judge (he’s currently the most valuable defensive shortstop in the game) and much more valuable on the bases (he’s going to post the second 30/30 season in Royals history any day now) there’s not a whole lot a player can do in the face of 60 home runs.

It's not that Witt isn't deserving, because he very obviously is. It's that there's more than one great player at a time in a league, and only one can actually win.

Witt will very likely finish second. Because of the nature of voting – selected voters don’t get to say by how much they’re choosing No. 1 over No. 2, just that one name is in first and one name is in second – it might look like a landslide, given the increasing likelihood that Judge wins unanimously or close to it.

That, however, would be a mistake. The better way to view it isn’t that Witt isn’t the best player in the AL; it’s that it’s taking one of the best seasons in baseball history to top him. The more interesting question, as it turns out, is not, “Will Witt win the 2024 AL MVP Award?” because he probably won’t. It’s this: "Will this be the best season on record to not win an MVP?" And a second, related question: "In how many years would he win?"

Witt, entering Thursday, had 9.6 WAR (via FanGraphs, as all numbers here will be). He’s projected to add approximately 1 additional WAR through the end of the season; let’s call it a 10.5 WAR year.

The modern MVP Award was first handed out by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) in 1931. It’s been awarded 186 times since, an even 93 per league. This year’s might not end up with Witt’s name on it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't rate with those who have won. Let's find out just where he belongs.

How good a season is this going to be?

Really, really good. Really good. Set aside the steals and defense just for a moment, and focus only on the bat. With a line of .339/.393/.611, Witt is the third-best hitter in the Majors, behind only Judge and Juan Soto. Yes, that's right; even though he won't get to 50-50, Witt is out-hitting Shohei Ohtani.

But because he does have that elite shortstop defense and value-adding baserunning, a metric like WAR absolutely adores him. It's not hard to see why, really. With two more steals, Witt will have the 72nd 30-30 season in history (one of which already belongs to him, since he did it last year, too). It’ll be only the seventh to come from a player who primarily played shortstop that season, and again, Witt isn’t just playing shortstop. He’s excelling at it.

If Witt gets to 10.5 WAR, as is currently projected, it’ll simultaneously be “one of the 25 best seasons since the modern MVP Award was first established” and yet also “not the best season of 2024, because, you know, Judge.”

(Remember, this is just since 1931, which is why you’re not seeing Babe Ruth’s best seasons.)

It is, full stop, an absolutely history-making year -- award placement or not.

So: Is this the best season ever among non-MVPs?

Somehow: No!

Witt, if he got to 10.5 WAR, would surpass the recent gold standard for “incredible seasons that didn’t end with an MVP,” informally held by Mike Trout when he posted back-to-back 10-WAR seasons in 2012 and ‘13, yet finished second to Miguel Cabrera each year in decisions that history may not look back upon kindly. He’ll narrowly edge Alex Rodriguez’s 2002, when he hit 57 homers and had 10 WAR but lost to Oakland’s Miguel Tejada because the A’s were good and the Rangers were not.

Witt will be so far up the list, in fact, that there are only four seasons since the advent of the MVP in which a player posted a season that had what we now view as more WAR and yet didn’t end up winning the award.

• 1931: Babe Ruth (10.7 WAR)
• 1934: Lou Gehrig (10.7 WAR)
• 1941: Ted Williams (11 WAR)
• 1943: Ted Williams (11.5 WAR)

In 1931, the first year of the award, Ruth lost to A’s ace Lefty Grove (7.1 WAR, not that anyone knew or cared about WAR at the time) in large part because the A’s won 107 games and the Yankees 94 – and because Grove personally went 31-4. Three years later, Lou Gehrig won the Triple Crown yet somehow didn’t win the MVP, losing to Detroit’s Mickey Cochrane -- again, almost certainly, because the Tigers finished in first place.

Then, there were the big two: Ted Williams in both 1941 and ‘42, including his .406 season in ‘41 and his Triple Crown in ‘42, in each case losing to a pennant-winning Yankee.

Of course, all four of those years came before integration and before World War II. They were pre-war and pre-WAR. Witt’s 2024 might not be the best non-MVP year in history, but it might be in anyone’s living memory.

In how many years would he have won the MVP?

We don’t know, of course; the player with the most WAR in a season isn’t always the MVP winner. That’s especially true in years when the margins are mere unimportant fractions, but even so, voters of decades ago certainly weren’t casting their ballots with this in mind, so it’s hardly fair to criticize them for it.

So it’s not so much “years he would have won” so much as “years where he’d have finished ahead of the MVP winner in Wins Above Replacement.” As it turns out, it's nearly 90% of them.

There are only 15 MVP seasons in which an MVP winner had more WAR than Witt is likely to get to this year, and well over 100 where they did not -- including some legendary years that hardly need explaining like "Joe DiMaggio's 1941," "Willie Mays's 1954" and "Ronald Acuña Jr.'s 2023."

Witt, again, has an uphill battle to take the AL MVP, but that says a lot more about Judge than it does Witt. We're not just witnessing one all-time great season in the AL. We're seeing two. Too bad, then, there's only one MVP Award to give.