Bobby Witt Jr. is putting together the kind of season that usually ends with an MVP trophy in hand. The problem is that the American League may have a bigger historical storyline brewing.
Witt has been everything the Royals need and more, even as Kansas City goes through one of its most disappointing seasons in recent memory. At the plate, he’s hitting .283/.353/.456 with a 121 wRC+, and he’s backing that up with elite defense at shortstop. His 18 OAA leads the majors, and his 4.7 fWAR leads the AL, which makes the case pretty simple on a pure value basis: Witt has been the league’s most valuable player so far.
But ESPN’s latest AL MVP betting odds point to Houston Astros DH Yordan Alvarez instead, and Alvarez is chasing something far rarer than a standard monster season. He’s on Triple Crown pace. After the first game of the unofficial second half, he leads the AL in batting average (.321), home runs (31) and RBI (71).
That matters because history has a way of bending MVP races. The last player in either league to win the Triple Crown was Miguel Cabrera in 2012, and before that it was Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.
Alvarez doesn’t play the field, which is why Witt has the edge in fWAR, but the precedent for a designated hitter winning MVP is there - Shohei Ohtani already proved that if the bat is loud enough, voters will listen. A Triple Crown would be an even louder statement.
For Witt, that would be a brutal twist, especially after 2024 already played out this way once. He posted what was then the greatest season ever by a shortstop, finishing with a 10.5 fWAR, only to run into Aaron Judge’s 11.3 fWAR and lose out on the award anyway.
This season had started to feel different. Witt was heating up, Judge was sidelined by a lengthy rib injury, and the door seemed open for Witt to finally get his MVP moment. Instead, Alvarez has stepped in as the new obstacle.
Cabrera’s 2012 win is the clearest reminder of how this can go. He took home 22 first-place votes and finished with 362 voting points, while Mike Trout’s 10.1 fWAR still wasn’t enough to overcome Cabrera’s 7.3 fWAR and Triple Crown chase.
There’s still time for the race to shift. Alvarez’s lead is slim - two homers, three RBI and seven batting average points over second place in the AL - and there are 63 games left. But if he stays on top in all three categories, the Triple Crown case only gets stronger.
Witt is doing everything possible to keep the Royals afloat on his own terms. The issue is that history has already shown how a historic offensive chase can outweigh even the most complete season. If Alvarez finishes the Triple Crown run, Witt could be watching another MVP opportunity slip away.
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