I was getting tired of listening to the sports news talking heads mention for the umpeenth time about Ryan Braun taking away the MVP trophy from Matt Kemp, and I thought I would try to take a look at the MVP voting in an objective manner for the past 30 years to see whether any controversy was really warranted.

So what I did first was to make a set of rules that combined a number of voting philosophies, and combined them into a matrix that would provide a consistent criteria. Any difference between the actual winner and the matrix winner then would be a level of variation worthy of debate. I used the following rules and rankings:

Rule 1: You must have received MVP votes to be considered. I'm not going to go hunting for the possibility of a fringe player who was potentially competitive for the award even though he received no votes. If you didn't get any votes at all I'm considering you unelectable, and there's probably a good reason you were omitted.

Rule 2: You must have had enough plate appearances to be eligible for the batting title. This award is for hitters. The Cy Young award is for pitchers. Take a hike Justin Verlander, Roger Clemens, etc.

Philosophy: Winning Is Everything - The performance of the team by winning percentage is ranked from top to bottom. If your team had the best record in the league you got a 1, if you were the second-best 2, and so on. This theory supports the voters who believe that the deserving MVP will be the most valuable player on the most successful team.

Philosophy: This Means WAR - The best way to determine the overall value of a player is to use WAR, which will not only account for their offensive performance, but do it in a way that compares you to your peers at your position, and includes defensive prowess. Eligible players are ranked from top to bottom by WAR, with the top player getting a 1, 2nd getting a 2, and so on.

Philosophy: OPS Is Tops - This is an offensive award, and the most valuable player in the league will be the most offensive player (offensive like A-Rod, not like John Rocker). Eligible players are ranked from top to bottom by OPS, with the top player getting a 1, 2nd getting a 2, and so on.

Summary

So with the eligibility rules each year I ranked all the players from 1 to X in the three voting philosophies, and added the totals. I didn't want to necessarily come up with a list of players who should have won, but the best candidate that could be argued to have won. If I couldn't come up with an alternative, then I figure it's not worth discussing, and within any reasonable doubt the actual winner was legit.

Data

Here are the actual winners from each league for each year, the categorical leaders, and the matrix leader - the best alternative candidate for each year (I'm not providing the entire matrix for each year, it would take too much space).

Conclusion

The matrix holds up better for the National League than it does the American League, and I think in part it is because of the Designated Hitter. The American League has more guys who put up great offensive numbers but have a lower WAR, which splits the votes up a bit, and because there is an extra spot in the lineup for a bat, there are more opportunities for people to put up great numbers but not play for a great team. In the National League if you can field your position efficiently and hit well it probably has a larger impact on your team's chances to win, and/or get lured away by free agency to one of the perennial winning teams who can afford you.

In any case, given the historical perspective, I don't see that the 2011 NL voting is within the margin of speculation to consider Braun undeserving or Kemp robbed of his MVP award. Compared to the voting of years past, 2011 was actually a pretty logicaland non-controversial vote.

Also, note that there were only three years - two in the AL, one in the NL - in which every philosophy agreed. Only three times did a player who led in WAR and OPS play for the team with the best record in their league and was awarded the MVP.

The three Undisputed MVP's are Robin Yount (1982), Rickey Henderson (1990), and Barry Bonds (1990).

I'm an amateur with analysis and I make up my own indices for the fun of it. I just ran the numbers to see what they would look like, hopefully the data provides most of discussion points and not the methodology too much.