1941 Baseball MVP. Did Ted Williams deserve to be the winner?
BLUEJAYWAY
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Looked over the voting results. Was really close. Looks like the 56 game streak was the deciding factor among the voters. And NY bias? But hitting .406 was to be considered strongly as well. A tough call. I would of settled on co-winners. Ted did have some edges in some categories.
Successful transactions:Tookybandit. "Everyone is equal, some are more equal than others".
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Some edges in some categories?
Writers didn't like Ted. If you have ever read a biography of Williams, he was a complete idiot his first few years in the MLB.
Rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
Hitting .400 was not quite that big of a deal at the time either.
@JoeBanzai Off hand do you have any specific recommendations for a biography to read on Ted?
I would have voted for Williams... but as they say... hindsight is 20/20
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
Joe is correct about .400 not being as big a deal in the context of Teds time. for us it is huge, been 80 years.
the answer is, yes, Williams should have won MVP in 41. He was better in every offensive category.
He got on base .553 of the time. mind-blowing.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Best $4.00 you will EVER spend;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/393225392856?epid=43115791&hash=item5b8e0f52d8:g:cY4AAOSwzitf~mW3
Absolutely great, funny, and in the end, heartbreaking book. My copy has fallen apart from going back and reading it over and over again.
Ted Williams "Hit List" is also good, he rates the all time great hitters (a bit dated, but great for old farts like me!).
You can't go wrong with a couple of other books written by Ted; "My Turn at Bat" and "The Science of Hitting".
If you read the Montville book and don't love it, I'll buy it from you, I need a newer copy.
Almost as good as Barry Bonds!
;-)
Ted Williams, how many MVP's should/could he have won?
1939, played more games than Foxx and Joe D. hit almost as well. Could.
1940, about as good as Greenberg who won it. Joe was better. Could.
1941, Should.
1942, Joe Gordon? Should.
1943-45 In Military. (Three more shoulds? We'll call them "Mights".)
1946, Did win it.
1947, Possibly the worst decision? Well, there were a few. Should.
1948, Best hitter by far, might have to go with Lou B. Could.
1949, Did win it.
1950, Broke elbow in All-Star game. (should?)
1951, Sorry Yogi. Should.
1952-53, In Military. (Two more "Mights"?)
1954, Broken collarbone, 117 games played hurts him. Could.
1955, Mickey Mantle "arrives". Williams plays in only 98 games (because of divorce!?), still the best Hitter in MLB. Could.
1956, Mantle here all the way.
1957, Close with Mantle, Ted beats him in BA, OBP and SLG. Should?
1958, Mantle should have won, but Ted has better BA, OBP and OPS. Could.
1959. Bad year. Only season where his OPS was below 1.019!
1960. Only played in 113 games. Higher BA, OBP and SLG than either Mantle or Maris. Final season. Could.
At the very least, Ted "deserved" 6 MVP's.
Ted "should" have won another 5 MVP's? So 7?
Ted "could" have won 14 MVP's.
Ted "Might" have won 19 MVP awards had he not missed 5 seasons in the Marines!
Obviously, some of those "coulds" went to a player I would have voted for over Ted. Also obvious is the fact that the writers aren't going to give it to the same guy every year, they will look for a reason to spread it around. Is that wrong?
Some of the writers also didn't vote for him because they didn't like him, he was not nice to the writers, swore at them a LOT! Two wrongs don't make a right.
Of course if he played for the Yankees it would now be called the "Ted Williams Award" instead of the MVP.
Gordon, DiMaggio and Berra all won the award when Ted was "better", but playing on the best team always helps.
Kind of like Michael Jordan. He "could" have won the MVP every year he played (minus the wizards years)
I honestly think that people started taking Jordan for granted. they just penciled in 30+ points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists and all defensive first team for every season. those type seasons became "average" for Jordan and other players who had great seasons would win MVP because MJ just had another great season
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Two extremely talented and competitive athletes!
Too bad Williams wasn't on better teams.
Yes! That book is FANTASTIC.
Ted Williams:
NONE of the above in the same year.
He led the league in average, OBP, and slugging in the same season FIVE times. He won the MVP in ZERO of those years.
Ted outhit Dimaggio during Dimaggio's streak.
It was pretty much a toss-up that year. Williams was the better hitter, but DiMaggio was seen as (and probably was) a GOAT playing center field while Williams took up space playing in left. Any writers who didn't have them 1-2 in some order, if there were any, were either biased or out of their minds.
Thank you!
At least one voter didn't - Thornton Lee got a 1st place vote. Since you probably haven't heard of him - I know I hadn't - he was the best pitcher in the AL that year, going 22-11 with a 2.37 ERA while leading the league in ERA+ and WHIP and WAR among pitchers.
That said, yeah, it's not totally clear cut that Ted should've won. Voters liked the streak and viewed Dimaggio as a complete player which, admittedly, Ted was not. That said, Williams deserved to win it.
Dimaggio's record still stands today. So I think the voters got it right imo.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
To clarify, Ted hit for the same average for the entire season as Joe did for those 56 games.
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You are welcome!
Thanks for checking into that, and I had also never heard of Lee. Fantastic year in 1941, by far the best of his career, and he would have been a lock for a Cy Young Award if it had existed then. Still, nowhere near as valuable as Williams or DiMaggio.
And I don't think anyone is arguing that DiMaggio was as good a hitter as Williams in 1941, but that he was as good a player. A GOAT CF is a LOT more valuable than a slug standing in LF. Was DiMaggio enough more valuable in the field to make up for Williams' hitting advantage? I don't know, and I doubt anyone could know for certain. I didn't watch either of them play, obviously, but looking at the stats I think I'd have voted for Williams. But it's a very, very close call.
Ted Williams to Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, "You know that big cheer you hear when your outside the stadium, it's from somebody hitting the ball, not from someone catching it".
I don't know if WAR is or should be a deciding factor, but Ted's was really good in his earlier years and not so good mid to end of his playing career.
He was an average fielder, Joe certainly had him beat there, but how many runs did Ted actually cost his team? Because he sure made up for that with his bat.
Last I looked, the season was 154 games in 1941, not 56. And Ted hit better during that period anyway.
It's not clear if you're suggesting DiMaggio was a candidate for GOAT CF or GOAT defensive CF, but I think either is preposterous. Defensively he was good to very good, but was already fading before the War. He was never Jones, Mays, Speaker, or Blair. Mays and Speaker were significantly better offensively, too.
In any event, 291 points to 254 is far too large a discrepancy in this MVP race.
Definitely defensive CF, not overall CF, and within that context you have a whole lot more faith in your ability to measure defensive value than I do in mine. While DiMaggio was playing, and people who had seen Speaker play (and fewer who had seen Jones play) thought he might be the GOAT (or second to his brother Dom). I didn't see any of them play so I won't pretend to know whether they were right, but I am very comfortable saying that, in 1941, Joe DiMaggio was a legitimate candidate for GOAT defensive CF. And the stats certainly don't contradict that; DiMaggio was a great CF (I don't know why you think he was "good to very good", but you'll never convince me of that).
As I said, I think I'd have voted for Williams first and DiMaggio second because it does seem unlikely that DiMaggio added enough value in the field to make up for his value deficit at the plate. But I also know that MVP voters have made so many laughably poor choices over the years that even if Williams should have won, DiMaggio winning it is still a better than average pick. As 1-2 MVP picks go, 1941 was a close race, and if some voters placed more value on the obvious defensive difference between Williams and DiMaggio than they should have, that's a pretty minor lapse in the scheme of things.
(I was about to hit Post Comment when it hit me that when you said "Jones" you were probably referring to Andruw. In my post, I am referring to Fielder, the more or less uncontested GOAT CF until Speaker challenged him for the title.)
From everything I have read, DiMaggio was a near perfect defender, who had a cannon for an arm until he hurt it.
He supposedly was so good, he made the tough catches look easy.
In 1941 Williams was the league leader in 8 offensive categories (some, like IBB, not that meaningful, I know), DiMaggio, 2. Ted's OPS was_ .204_ higher!
Ted made about the same amount of errors on a LOT less chances, and here's where percentages screw up comparisons. Ted "failed to make a play he should have" 11 times and Dimaggio 9 that year in the OF, Dimaggio had 5 more assists.
Two errors and 5 assists just doesn't mean much the way I see it.
I think everyone knows why Ted lost that year, the voters didn't like him.
But, of course, what this analysis misses are the plays DiMaggio did make that he "shouldn't have", the doubles he turned into singles, and the runners who didn't try to advance because he was in CF rather than a lesser fielder.
Looking at runs created and ballpark effects, Williams created 20-some more runs than DiMaggio that year, which is substantial. Did DiMaggio save that many more runs than Williams (about 1 per week) in the outfield? Probably not, but the perception that he did probably did exist, and it's probably not so far off that I can work up any outrage at DiMaggio getting the MVP.
Perfectly said.
My response would be;
Turns out, it was a pretty historic year for Ted in baseball history (I really don't get the big deal on the streak) hitting wise.
Had DiMaggio achieved a historic defensive year to go along with a great offensive one...............maybe.
Bottom line is; if you get outraged at how many MVP's Williams or Mantle should/could have won, and didn't, you're going to be a very angry person!
So are you saying Brett's .390+ season was more impressive than Ted's .400 season ?
That's the way I read it anyway with all those great relievers in the game in the 70's like Gossage and others.
?????
No, just that .400 wasn't rare then. Bill Dickey hit .401 in 1930. And there were lots in the decade prior took that.
^ Bill Terry
The dumb thing about that is that I looked it up to remind myself who it was that hit .401 in 1930. For the life of me, I couldn't remember Terry's last name. Just kept thinking Bill Dickey even though I KNEW that was wrong. So I looked it up and then...typed it into the post wrong anyway. Wasn't even drinking either.
Wonder if both records were broken this year (highly unlikely) who would be the MVP. The +.400 hitter or the streak. Or maybe neither if there was another stellar performance. Or if 1 was a Yankee and the other a Red Sox player. Would the edge go to the more likable player?
I would imagine other things would go into it, like team results and power hitting. I can't see a .400 hitter with an .850 OPS for a last place team getting a ton of support. Remember that even the Triple Crown is no guarantee of the MVP award.