Modern stats show Williams as true ’41 AL MVP

Ted Williams remains the last player to finish a season with a .400 average, doing so when he hit .406 in 1941. But while he won the American League batting title by a whopping 47 points that year, his efforts fell short in the league’s Most Valuable Player Award voting.

The 1941 AL MVP Award went to Joe DiMaggio, who hit 30 homers and paced the Majors with 125 RBIs and 348 total bases. He also led the Yankees to a 101-53 campaign that culminated with their ninth World Series title. And, oh yeah, the Yankee Clipper had a Major League-record 56-game hitting streak along the way.

Yet 75 years later, a reasonable argument can be made — using stats that either didn’t exist or weren’t as highly valued in 1941 — that Williams was the worthier choice.

The MVP Awards are voted on by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, which established the modern voting system following the 1931 season. According to the BBWAA, its most paramount criteria to be considered in voting is the “actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.”

Williams led the Majors in batting average (.406), on-base percentage (.553), slugging (.735), home runs (37), runs scored (135) and walks (147), but the Red Sox went 84-70 and finished well behind the Yankees in the AL pennant race.

While BBWAA measures clearly state a winner doesn’t need to come from a division winner or playoff qualifier, that generally has been the case. Of the 40 MVP Award winners in both the AL and National League the past two decades, only five have been players whose teams didn’t reach the playoffs — with the most recent example being Bryce Harper in 2015. Voting is always conducted before the postseason.

Harper became just the 17th player in either league to win the award unanimously. And a hefty determinant in that can be ascribed to the metrics that have become vital to judging a player’s …

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