The upcoming postseason may be the main focus of the baseball world right now, but as the regular season winds down, the debate over who should win each of the league’s major awards generally starts to heat up.
Kris Bryant looks like the front-runner to win NL MVP honors, while the AL race is still wide-open with Boston Red Sox teammates Mookie Betts and David Ortiz perhaps the co-favorites heading into the final week.
The following won’t focus on each league as a whole, though, but instead on who deserves team MVP honors for all 30 MLB franchises.
Position players generally tend to get the nod over pitchers when it comes to the league award, with Clayton Kershaw being a rare exception in 2014, but more than a few pitchers walked away with team honors.
The idea here was to find the player who has meant the most to the success of his respective team here in 2016.
Sometimes that was the player who led his team in WAR, but by no means was WAR the deciding factor in naming each team’s MVP.
Along with a focus on each team’s winner, a full ballot of the top five players was selected for each team to provide a few honorable mentions deserving of recognition as well.