Regular season 2024 MLB awards: Aaron Judge gets MVP edge over Bobby Witt Jr.

I kept trying to get there. In my baseball soul, I believe that the total player is the most valuable element in the game. I favor the guy who helps every day in some way.

And there were moments late this season when I thought Francisco Lindor and Bobby Witt Jr. were the MVPs. If you were an executive and I told you nothing else about your roster except you could take everything Lindor has brought in 2024 (hitting, fielding, baserunning and off the field) or Ohtani in the same categories and the same for Witt vs. Judge, who would you take?

If the answers were Lindor and Witt, shouldn’t that make them the MVPs?

But then Lindor got hurt and somehow Ohtani got more magical. And Aaron Judge kept ending up in sentences with Babe Ruth — and if you are dueling Babe Ruth historically, you probably have it over Bobby Witt Jr. this year.

Ultimately, I just came to believe when we think of the 2024 season, Shohei Ohtani’s name will come up first and then Judge. Perhaps that makes them Most Memorable, but there are plenty of valuable reasons for that.

I actually think Witt has a great case, and picking him second to a player whose 226 OPS-plus is bettered in the Integration Era (since 1947) by only Barry Bonds and Ted Williams is not like saying he is a White Sox utility infielder.