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Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani? AL MVP debate might be affected by more than numbers

New York Yankees star Aaron Judge, left, and Angels star Shohei Ohtani are the frontrunners for the 2022 AL MVP award.

New York Yankees star Aaron Judge, left, and Angels star Shohei Ohtani are the frontrunners for the 2022 AL MVP award. (Adam Hunger; Alex Gallardo / Associated Press)

As Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens started showing up on the Hall of Fame ballot, the Baseball Writers Assn. of America asked for a clarification. The Hall of Fame listed “integrity, sportsmanship, character” among its six criteria for voters. In the aftermath of the steroid era, how did the Hall want BBWAA voters to interpret those criteria?

The Hall’s board of directors shrugged. That led to a decade of initially interesting but ultimately tedious debates about whether poster boys for the steroid era should be voted into the Hall of Fame.

The BBWAA did not run the election for the Hall of Fame, but it does run the election for most valuable player. These are the first words of the MVP ballot: “There is no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide.”

There is a disturbance in the force, and his name is Shohei Ohtani.

In the Angels’ 2-1 victory over the presumably playoff-bound Seattle Mariners on Saturday, Ohtani scored one run, drove in one run, and allowed no runs. This is about as close as you can get to winning a game by yourself. That seems pretty valuable.

Ohtani can do this in any given start. No one else can.

Ohtani is 28. He can keep this up.

Angels starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani delivers against the Houston Astros on Sept. 10.

Angels starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani delivers against the Houston Astros on Sept. 10. (Eric Christian Smith / Associated Press)

That really is the undercurrent of the Ohtani vs. Aaron Judge debate: If Ohtani wins this year, he might just win every year. Is that fair?

Perhaps the emergence of a two-way superstar should prompt the BBWAA to define “valuable,” and to explore whether there is a way out of what is starting to become another tedious debate, intensified because Judge plays for the New York Yankees.

If the distinguished Judge were on the verge of hitting his 60th home run for the Houston Astros — a team with a better record than the Yankees — he would not be generating the attention that comes with playing in the league’s biggest media market. We would not be subjected to the East Coast bias that produces such absurd lines as this: “Almost no one not currently employed by the Angels or living in Orange County, Calif. actually believes someone other than Judge could be MVP.”

Judge leads in WAR? Fair, but not decisive. Mike Trout led in WAR a decade ago, and…

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