Mike Trout led the American League in fWAR each of the last four seasons. Over that four year span, he amassed ten more fWAR than any other player in the majors. Why does he only own one MVP Award?
He lost the first because Miguel Cabrera won the triple crown. He lost the second because Miguel Caberea hit .348/.442/.636, and the voters don’t care about defense. He lost this season because Josh Donaldson played on a better team, and was clutch for that team. The year he won, there was no competition, and he did win unanimously.
Mike Trout is simply the best player in the majors. The writers should start with, the questions, “Why should I vote for anyone else? Why don’t I believe the numbers in front of me?”
Luckily for Trout, he has yet to hit his prime years. Maybe the writers will wake up to how great this person plays, and he’ll get the four or five MVPs he’ll deserve.
You forgot “stat phobic idiot writers who use Trout as their focus for expressing hostility to WAR and other modern methods.” At least for the first two years–Donaldson is the first one who could at least arguably be said to have been the best player in the AL in a year when Trout finished second.
Note that even with the writers actively screwing him, he already has more MVP Award shares at 23 than many Hall of Famers with two or more MVPs have (Roy Campanella, Cal Ripken, Dale Murphy. . .).
Some of us believe there is a distinction between best player and MVP.
Trouts no longer as cheap as he once was either, so if you consider monetary value as opposed to on-field value, Trout had a surplus value to his AAV of 42 million not quite as valuable as Donaldsons 56 million (using bWAR and 7 million per WAR).
One can argue also that Donaldson 8.8 bWAR generated far more revenue for Toronto than Trouts 9.4 since those additional wins took the Blue Jays to the division championship and added 400,000 additional fans in the regular season, playoff revenues, plus increased revenue in 2016 with huge ticket price increases. All told, his additional wins may have been worth more than 70 million to the Blue Jays. Angels attendance actually dropped.