Surprised Ohtani has never had a 10 WAR season.

Wow. You can never trade one of those guys, am I right!

Hitting doesn’t fall off that much he will just move to DH. Like papi had one of his best seasons while playing on an insanely painful foot season at 40.

You’re also missing Witt Jr. who did it in 2024.

With a fabulous ERA too.

Cy young is the last piece of hardware he needs. I wonder if he tries to just pitch one season.

He has al and nl mvp. Rings. Roy. Wbc title plus mvp of tournament. Also won pacific league mvp and has a chip there too. My god

This is a completely valid way to look at it IMO.

Heavy petting favourite, too

Shohei loves to bet the favorites

Didn’t think bettors had any brain cells

C and SS are considered more valuable on defense. I think both traditional and sabermetric views.

An interesting quirk of the conversation is that PCA is hitting while playing a difficult defensive. His marginal performance over an alternative there is huge, since there’s a narrower pool of offensive talent at CF.

Shohei - though actually playing an even more valuable run prevention role - is sort of more replaceable in the lineup, because anybody could take his DH spot.

Anyway, this is reflected in WAR, with PCA getting a positional adjustment to his offensive value that Shohei doesn’t. But it goes a long way to explaining how you can calculate PCA to be as valuable as Shohei so far this year with just an equal wRC+. The natural counterargument is the largely unquantifiable “extra roster spot” idea that only Shohei provides.

When you break it down like that, I totally can see Shohei being the favorite.

He doesn’t even necessarily have to hit like that. His MLB-leading WAR includes a truly putrid April. He was virtually tied with Ohtani while Ohtani was pitching.

But there’s a lot of question marks to it. Ohtani on the hitting side has just been “good.” We’ve seen him go way more nuclear with the bat. Will he be better not needing to focus on pitching too, or will the knee affect his offense? Will he pitch again in September, or not at all?

I don’t think it’s just the defense vs pitching. I think in a vacuum the pitching is definitely more valuable than the defense.

However, you also have to consider that if PCA and Ohtani have the same offensive stats, that PCA doing it as a CF is much more valuable than Ohtani as a DH. Which obviously WAR accounts for, which is why PCA has a higher oWAR than Ohtani right now

Even if he doesn’t win it, got damn it what a season to remember. Him being only 24 hopefully means many more years of this to come

He has had 4.3 fwar since the start of June (41 games). If he continues that at pace he’d have 12.5 wins, so 10 wins has some regression.

Since July he has 1.2 fwar 15 games which at that pace he would finish over 11 wins.

10 wins seems achievable.

⁵⁰⁄₅₀ chance really

I hope

Yeah, he had a monstrous stretch from June into the break (230 wRC+!), which probably isn’t sustainable (for anyone to be fair). His BABIP is pretty high compared to last year so maybe there’s some luck in his success, but the BB%/OBP are definitely a great improvement.

if he can settle in some between his peaks and valleys, thats the MVP level guy the Cubs are hoping for; he just hasn’t be able to avoid that so far.

It’s been a devastating few months to be a PCA hater. Maybe we will be vindicated in the second half

PCA is the best defensive CF to ever play baseball. He could have a .600 OPS and still be an everyday starter. And being really bad for PCA was his March/April of .670 OPS.

Fans always think current production continues forever.

Just like many in this thread are doing.

Yeah Barry got his 10 WAR the honest way by overcoming that negative defensive WAR like the good lord intended.