Arguably the most prestigious award a player could win throughout the history of baseball has been the Triple Crown. In order to win it, a player must lead the league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. Only ten players have ever accomplished this feat, nine which are in the Hall of Fame, and the one who isn’t is Miguel Cabrera, who is still playing. However, in today’s game where batting average, home runs, and RBI’s are outdated stats to determine a player's value it begs the question. If a player wins the Triple Crown, does he also deserve to win MVP?

The original plan for this article was to compare each Triple Crown winner using modern stats to other top players in the league during that year. However, that won’t be necessary. In order to answer “If a player wins the Triple Crown, does he also deserve to win MVP?,” all that needs to be done is look over the 2012 American League MVP race between the previously mentioned Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera and rookie center fielder Mike Trout.

Miguel cabrera

At the end of the 2012 season, Detroit Tigers third baseman Miguel Cabrera finished the year with a league leading .330 average, 44 home runs, and 139 runs batted in. This resulted in Miguel Cabrera winning the first Triple Crown since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967 and won the AL MVP with 22 first place votes and 362 total points, 81 more points than Trout. As mentioned previously however, these stats are outdated, so how do Cabrera and Trout compare using modern numbers?

While the numbers are close, I’d have to give the edge to Miguel Cabrera since he has Trout beat in every category besides a 1 point difference in wRC+. However, these are just their offensive numbers and there is more to baseball besides what is done at the plate. 2022 Tommy Edman is a prime example of this as despite having a 98 wRC+, his 3.7 fWAR is still top 20 in baseball due to elite defense and base running. With this in mind, let’s now look at how Cabrera and Trout compare on stats that aren’t offense related.

Trout blows Cabrera completely out of the water in every stat that isn’t offense related. While offense is more valuable than defense and base running, they can’t be ignored. Mike Trout was the best base running in the American League that year as he led the AL in all three base running stats listed above. Not to mention, Trout’s 21 DRS in center field was the third most at a single position in the AL and his 9.8 UZR was the sixth highest at a single position in the AL. Mike Trout was an elite base runner, while also providing elite defense in center field. Cabrera was nowhere near Trout in this regard as he was costing the Tigers runs on the base paths and on defense. Cabrera has Trout ever so slightly on offense, however since Trout has Cabrera beat by a large margin on defense and base running, Trout deserved to win the 2012 American League MVP. This is further proven by Trout having the higher WPA and an fWAR nearly three wins higher. This all proves that just because a player wins the Triple Crown, they don’t also instantly deserve to win MVP.

more comparisons

Something interesting to note is not only did Trout have a better all around year than Cabrera in 2012, but so did NL MVP winner Buster Posey. This is how they compare to each other:

Similarly to Trout, despite being very close offensively, Posey was a slightly better base runner and played elite defense at catcher, arguably the most important defensive position, making him more valuable than Cabrera. What’s also interesting was not only was 2012 not the best year of Cabrera’s career. This is how Cabrera’s top four seasons compare to each other: