Perhaps the greatest baseball player of all time is Babe Ruth. Maybe it’s Henry Aaron or Barry Bonds or Josh Gibson or Oscar Charleston. Proponents of a more old-fashioned version of the sport might make the case for Ty Cobb or Honus Wagner. For a time, before injuries derailed their careers and their potential seal of supreme greatness, they could have been Ken Griffey Jr. or Mike Trout or Mickey Mantle, for that matter. Maybe if Ted Williams doesn’t miss five seasons while he serves in wars, he will rise above the sport as the greatest hitter that ever lived.
However, you can drill holes in the cases for any of those types. Small holes (maybe they didn’t play center field, maybe they couldn’t pitch, maybe their heyday lasted only a few seasons), but still holes. You can’t find any room for Willie Mays.
“There have only been two true geniuses in the world,” actress Tallulah Bankhead once said. “Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.”
Williams himself once said, “They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays.”
Mays appeared in 24 of them.
Writer Joe Posnanski once came up with an idea called “The Willie Mays Hall of Fame,” because fans complained that the standards for selection to Cooperstown were too low. It was a joke, of course. As Joe wrote, if Mays were the standard for the Hall of Fame, he would have only one member.
Mays could run.
How good was Mays on the bases? In 1971, he tied for the National League lead in a category called baserunning. He was 40 years old.
Mays could play.
Perhaps his famous catch in the 1954 World Series wasn’t the greatest of all time. Mays himself said he made better plays. But it’s the catch that everyone still talks about as the best in history: 70 years later it remains unsurpassed, a mythological work with video proof that he was worthy of every one of his 12 Golden Gloves.
Mays could pitch.
“(Mays) picked up the ball at the base of the 406-foot sign, turned and fired. It came on a single bounce, directly in front of the plate, and into the glove of catcher Tom Haller, who put it on the ground. It amazed Willie Stargell. Old-timers described it as the best pitch ever thrown at the old KeynoteUSA Field,” Bob Stevens wrote of a 1965 game.
Mays could hit.
A lifetime average of .301, with many of his best years coming in the pitcher-dominated 1960s, when mounds were as tall as Mount Everest and pitchers like Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson hit you with a fastball if he didn’t like the way you looked at them. Ten seasons with a .300 average and almost 3,300 hits in his career. “As a hitter, his only weakness is a wild pitch,” Bill Rigney, one of his managers, once joked.
Mays could hit for power.
He wasn’t a big man, standing 5-foot-10 and weighing 170 pounds, but he was all sinewy muscle with huge hands that gripped the bat like a toothpick. He finished with 660 home runs and, if not for missing almost two full seasons while serving in the Army, he might have broken Ruth’s home run record before Aaron. He led his league four times in home runs.
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Two years ago, KeynoteUSA ranked Mays the second-best player of all time behind Ruth. Bill James had him third (behind Ruth and Wagner). Posnanski ranked him first. And here’s the thing: No matter how great Mays is, no matter how brilliant her all-around game is, no matter how highly ranked she appears on these lists, Mays might be even better than we think.
Mays won only two MVP awards in his career, in 1954 and 1965. Considering modern analytics and how voting philosophy has evolved over the past two decades, Mays could have won… well, let’s consider how many MVP awards he could have won . have won under modern criteria.
In the Mays era, the MVP award usually went to a player from the pennant-winning team. Other subjective qualities, like leadership, influenced the thought process, and the writers were reluctant to give it to the same guy every season. Nowadays, the focus is much more on statistical value: the best player rather than simply the key player on a first-place team.
So let’s go year by year and delve into Mays’ career: Remember, he’s competing with inner-circle Hall of Famers like Aaron, Frank Robinson, Ernie Banks, Roberto Clemente, Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson for MVP honors . We’ll skip his 1951 rookie season and then his two Army seasons and start with 1954.
Willie Mays at bat in 1959. Should he have won the MVP that season? Hy Peskin/Sports Illustrated//Keynote USA/Getty Images
1954
Actual winner: Willie Mays
Mays hit .345/.411/.667 with 41 home runs to lead the Giants to the pennant. He led the National League in WAR with 10.4. While he won easily, he somehow received only 16 of the 24 first-place votes. It is almost certain that today he would be the unanimous winner.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 1
1955
Actual winner: Roy Campanella
Mays Finish: Fourth
The Dodgers won the pennant and Campanella, their catcher, had a good season with 32 home runs and a .318 average. Mays hit .319 with 51 home runs and a league-leading 1.059 OPS, easily surpassing Campanella in WAR (9.2 to 5.2). Today, it’s likely to be a two-man race between Mays and Dodgers center fielder Duke Snider (8.6 WAR), who had 42 home runs and a 1.046 OPS. That the Dodgers won the pennant helps Snider, but Mays’ home runs and defense give him the slightest advantage. He takes home his second trophy.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 2
1956
Actual winner: Don Newcombe
Mays finish: 17
Mays tied Snider for the league lead in WAR with 7.6, with Aaron at 7.2. Newcombe won 27 games. Today it’s a three-man race among outfielders. The Dodgers won the pennant, but it’s another coin toss. We’ll give this one to Snider and keep Mays at two.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 2
1957
Actual winner: Henry Aaron
Mays Finish: Fourth
Mays led Aaron in WAR (8.3 to 8.0), but Aaron led the National League in home runs and RBIs and his Milwaukee Braves won the pennant. This one is for Aaron.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 2
1958
Actual winner: Ernie Banks
Mays Finish: Second
A difficult one. Mays again leads in WAR (10.2), but Banks is not far behind (9.3). Banks led Mays in home runs (47 to 29) and RBI (129 to 96), but Mays hit .347 to Banks’ .313 and had the higher OPS while playing in a park of tougher hitters. Modern voters would know that Banks hit .340 at Wrigley with 30 home runs and a more vulgar .287 with 17 home runs on the road. No. 3 for Mays.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 3
1959
Actual winner: Ernie Banks
Mays Finish: Sixth
Banks, with 10.2 WAR, was the deserved winner (Mays had 7.8, a “depressed” year for him).
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 3
1960
Actual winner: Dick Groat
Mays finish: third
Groat was the shortstop for the Pirates, the surprise pennant winner, and had a good season, hitting .325 with good defense, but he also had only two home runs and 50 RBIs. Writers of the time valued his leadership and brave toughness. His teammate Don Hoak came in second in the voting. But Mays surpassed both of them in WAR (9.5 to 6.1 and 5.4) and would win today. That’s number 4.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 4
1961
Actual winner: Frank Robinson
Mays Finish: Sixth
Mays was second in WAR behind Aaron and Robinson, with the Reds in first, fourth. Robinson led the league in OPS and could still win today, albeit in a much tighter vote (he received 15 of the 16 first-place votes back then).
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 4
1962
Actual winner: Maury Wills
Mays Finish: Second
In my opinion, one of the worst MVP votes ever. Voters were obsessed with Wills breaking the single-season stolen base record with 104, but Mays was the much more valuable player (10.5 WAR to 6.0) and was denied in a close vote even though the Giants won. to Wills’ Dodgers in a playoff to win the pennant. Give Mays his fifth MVP.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 5
1963
Actual winner: Sandy Koufax
Mays Finish: Fifth
This debate will make heads pop in 2024. Koufax (9.9 WAR) went 25-5 with a 1.88 ERA and 306 strikeouts. Mays led the league with 10.6 WAR, batting .314 with 38 home runs and his usual Gold Glove defense. Aaron (9.1 WAR) led with 44 home runs and 130 RBI. The Dodgers won the pennant, and that’s how Koufax won easily. In 2024? Pitchers don’t usually take voting into account (well, they don’t throw 311 innings either). I give Mays the number 6.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 6
1964
Actual winner: Ken Boyer
Mays Finish: Sixth
Boyer was no slouch, leading the National League in runs batted in as his Cardinals won the pennant on the final day of the season (the Giants finished fourth, three games back). No doubt the Giants’ inability to win more pennants, despite Hall of Famers like Juan Marichal, Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda surrounding him, hurt Mays in the MVP voting. The Giants can rightfully be viewed as underperforming given their top-line talent and they certainly were viewed that way back then. But Mays? It’s not his fault. He had an 11.0 WAR while leading the National League with 47 home runs and a .990 OPS. I have to think that today he would win in a landslide with that WAR. That’s number 7.
Hypothetical MVP number: 7
1965
Actual winner: Willie Mays
Finally, 11 years after his first MVP win, Mays has another: He posted a career-best 11.2 WAR after hitting .317/.398/.645 with 52 home runs. However, he earned only nine of the 20 first-place votes, as Koufax (six) and Wills (five) split the first-place Dodgers’ votes. Regardless, Mays would win today to give him the #8 spot.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 8
1966
Actual winner: Roberto Clemente
Mays finish: third
Marichal and Koufax tied for the lead in WAR at 9.7, with Mays at 9.0 and Clemente at 8.2. Koufax could win today (he finished second) with 27 wins, 1.73 ERA, 323 innings and 317 strikeouts. Our heads would explode at those numbers, but Mays would certainly crack the top three in his last great season.
Hypothetical number of MVPs: 8
After that, Mays slows down, so he ends up with eight MVP awards, one more than Bond’s all-time leading seven.
Then again, it may not be necessary to go back in time to make Mays an eight-time MVP winner to appreciate his stature among the sport’s all-time greats. After all, he was a genius. Fifty-one years after his last game, that still seems like an appropriate description.
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