The Most Questionable MLB Awards Of All Time

Handing out MLB awards can’t be all that hard. Because baseball is basically an individual sport masquerading as a team sport, determining a player’s worth should be easy. But, apparently, it’s not easy. Or at least, it hasn’t been.

A century and a half of history has shown us that picking the most valuable players, best pitchers, and best fielders in each league has been anything but simple for the voting media; I mean, four relievers have won MVP honors!

Check out our collection of the most questionable MVP, Cy Young, and Gold Glove awards handed out in MLB history.

Roger Peckinpaugh, 1925 AL MVP

It’s comical how much better Al Simmons was than the Washington Senators shortstop. The Philadelphia Athletics center fielder had more than twice as many hits, doubles, total bases, and RBI, and hit six times as many home runs.

Though Simmons, then 23, went on to a Hall of Fame career, he never won MVP.

Bob O’Farrell, 1926 NL MVP

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O’Farrell’s Cardinals teammate Rogers Hornsby, a player-manager, claimed the award in 1925, so perhaps voters resisted giving it to him a second time around.

Hornsby wasn’t the only Cardinals player to post better numbers than O’Farrell, who hit seven homers and drove in 68 runs; Les Bell and Jim Bottomley also would have been better choices.

Joe Gordon, 1942 AL MVP

The only thing the Yankees second baseman led the AL in for the 1942 season was strikeouts, going down 95 times.

Ted Williams won the triple crown that season, doubling Gordon’s home run total, scoring 53 more times, and driving in 34 more runs, but missed out on what would have been his second MVP trophy, probably because of his prickly relationship with the voting media.

Joe DiMaggio, 1947 AL MVP

Joltin’ Joe had one of his worst seasons in 1947 — of the the 11 seasons in which he played in at least 120 games, his 20 homers in ’47 were the fewest, and his 97 RBI were the second-fewest.

For the second time in his career, Ted Williams won the triple crown and led the league in runs but didn’t claim MVP, this time losing out by a single vote point, 202-201.