Value Judgments

No Met has ever won the Most Valuable Player award, a fact made more painful to Met fans by the result of this year's NL MVP voting, in which David Wright of the Mets deserved the award as much as or more than any player in the league, and would likely have received it if the Mets as a team had won a couple of more games during the season.

Let's put the Mets' failure to win any MVP awards in perspective. Since 1962, when the Mets joined the National League, there have been 47 MVP awards handed out: one a year over 45 seasons, and two in 1979, when Willie Stargell of the Pirates and Keith Hernandez of the Cardinals shared the award. Of those 47 MVPs since 1962, 44 (or 94%) have been won by players with one of the eight NL franchises that date back to the 19th century. Since 1962, the NL MVPs won by these 8 longest-standing franchises break down as follows:
Giants 9
Cardinals and Reds 7 each
Phillies and Pirates 5 each
Dodgers and Braves 4 each
Cubs 3

The Giants top this list thanks to Barry Bonds, who has won 5 MVPs while playing for the Giants. The Cardinals, in contrast, have won their seven expansion-era MVPs with seven different players, the most different winners for any NL franchise (the A's in the AL also have had seven different MVP winners since 1962).

The only three NL MVPs representing teams other than the old original 8 franchises have been the Astros' Jeff Bagwell, the Padres' Ken Caminiti, and the Rockies' Larry Walker. Oddly these three expansion team MVPs were all awarded over a four season period, 1994 to 1997. The other expansion franchises in the NL, the Mets, Expos, Marlins, Diamondbacks and Brewers, have never had a player win an NL MVP award (Robin Yount, twice, and Rollie Fingers won AL MVP awards as Brewers when Milwaukee was in the American League).

The dearth of expansion-franchise MVP winners in the National league is not replicated in the American League. In the AL, expansion teams have won 14 of the 46 MVP awards (over 30%) given out since 1962. The Rangers alone have won 5 AL MVP awards (despite having never even made it to the World Series), the Brewers won 3 during their years in the AL, the Mariners and Angels have each won 2, and the Royals and Blue Jays have won one MVP award each.

A large part of the reason that the Mets and other NL expansion teams have done relatively poorly in the distribution of MVP awards over the years, compared to AL expansion teams, may lie in the fact that NL expansion teams have played a preponderance of their seasons in pitcher-friendly parks, parks that dampen the big homer and RBI numbers that MVP voters respond to most enthusiastically. AL expansion teams have generally played in less pitcher-friendly settings than NL teams, producing more big homer and RBI seasons and more MVP winners.