There Is No Anti-Yankee Bias in MVP Voting (Part 1)
- Paul Semendinger
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
by Paul Semendinger
November 15, 2025
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There is a narrative, perpetuated by many, that somehow, the BBWAA voters as a whole, or at least enough of them to sway the voting for awards, have an anti-Yankees bias. This has been the claim for years. People argue that Yankees players don't win awards because the writers (or the league, or the sport in general) is somehow "against" the Yankees.
I do not believe that to be the case. And the facts I will share will prove that there is no anti-Yankees bias in the awarding of trophies, awards, and the like.
To be clear, because people often parse words and argue things I am not arguing...
The claim that I will refute in this article and series is the idea that there is a Yankees-bias that prevents the Yankees from winning major awards. The idea of this anti-Yankees bias in awards was stated time and again by numerous people, especially in September and in the last weeks, as the MVP race and debate was heating up. It was said time and again that "Judge won't win because of the anti-Yankee bias."
Fans, and others, have twisted themselves in knots trying to find ways to make this claim - one that is absolutely and demonstrably false.
One simple fact should end this argument before it even starts - No team in baseball has had more MVP winners than the Yankees. There have been 23 MVPs who came from the Bronx. The next most are the St. Louis Cardinals with 18. The Dodgers, with a mere 14, come in third.
How can one make a claim that the writers don't vote for Yankees when they give the award to Yankees more than any other team?
This same anti-Yankees argument is also made for the reason certain Yankees are not in the Hall of Fame. It is said that the writers or the voters (or whomever) are against the Yankees. And yet, there are more Yankees in the Hall of Fame than any other team. People claim that the writers won't vote in Yankees while they are... voting in Yankees.
Some then argue that the voters only elect the Yankees that are "guaranteed" Hall of Famers, but they leave out the Yankees who are borderline candidates. This is also false. Some of the most borderline inductees in the Hall of Fame (Phil Rizzuto and Catfish Hunter to name two) were Yankees. A future article in this series will look at the Hall of Fame to show that there is not an anti-Yankees bias keeping worthy Yankees out of Cooperstown's hallowed halls.
What some fans also do is cherry pick so-called facts to prove their points about this supposed anti-Yankees bias. They point out individual seasons, across baseball's long history to try to demonstrate that this bias exists by using evidence that seems compelling, but in the end, is flawed.
An example of this is the argument that a Yankee didn't win an award in 1978, another Yankee didn't win an award in 1986, and another in 2002, while at the same time some Yankees didn't get into the Hall of Fame across multiple decades. All one needs to do is take a moment to think about this claim to see the absurdity of the argument. In order for there to be an anti-Yankees bias, it would have to be spread across a plethora of writers across many decades, and in different cities, and among completely different groups of voters who vote in a variety of voting systems. Most of the voters in 1978 were not still voting on awards in 2002. The various Hall of Fame Veterans Committees are not the BBWAA. On and on. When one considers just this fact, the anti-Yankees narrative should go away completely. For the anti-Yankee bias to exist as the reason Yankees don't win awards or get in the Hall of Fame, there would have to be this nefarious group of people that do all they can to sway the voters against Yankees - and who have been doing this for decades. On its face, this idea is absurd.
In this series, I am going to end this anti-Yankees bias narrative once and for all using facts, not speculation, not conspiracy theory, but cold-hard facts. The facts will uncover and tell the truth.
This article will focus on the MVP voting in the 2020s. (Remember, just this week, just before Judge was announced as the 2025 MVP, there were some who claimed he wouldn't win the award because of the supposed anti-Yankees bias.)
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In 2025, the MVP was New York Yankee Aaron Judge. He was the league's WAR leader. He deserved the award.
Also receiving MVP votes was Yankee Cody Bellinger who finished 14th overall in voting. As such, there were two Yankees among the top 15 vote getters including the winner.
CONCLUSION - There cannot be an anti-Yankee bias that prevents Yankees players from winning awards when Yankees players are, in the end, winning the awards. The fact that another Yankees player received MVP consideration also demonstrates that the voting body, in fact, does consider Yankees for the MVP Award. Yankees were not excluded in consideration for the MVP.
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In 2024, the MVP was New York Yankee Aaron Judge. He was the league's WAR leader. He deserved the award.
Also receiving votes was Yankee Juan Soto who finished 3rd overall in the voting despite being 5th overall in WAR.
CONCLUSION - Again, there is and can be no bias. Two Yankees were among the top three finishers in the voting. The voters voted for Yankees.
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In 2023, the MVP was Shohei Ohtani. He was the league's WAR leader. He deserved the award.
Still, Yankees did get MVP votes. Gerrit Cole (who won the Cy Young Award unanimously) finished 11th in the MVP voting. Cole was 3rd in WAR, so one could claim that 11th place was low, but arguments have been made that pitchers shouldn't win the MVP. Cole was the highest pitcher in the voting, and the only pitcher among the top 20 vote getters.
Aaron Judge was 15th in the voting and also was 15th in WAR.
CONCLUSION - There is nothing here that gives any indication that the voters had an anti-Yankees bias. In fact, Aaron Judge played in only 106 games and got MVP votes. Gerrit Cole won the Cy Young Award running away and was the top finisher in MVP voting among pitchers.
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In 2022, the MVP was Aaron Judge. He was the league's WAR leader. He deserved the award.
No other Yankee received MVP votes. Of note, that year Shohei Ohtani hit 34 home runs while also pitching to a 15-9 record. There was a great case for Ohtani to get serious MVP consideration. Ohtani was doing things no one in the game was. And yet, Judge received 98% of the first place votes.
CONCLUSION - Going back now four consecutive years, we see Aaron Judge winning three MVP Awards. In the year Judge didn't win, Gerrit Cole was the Cy Young Award winner and the top MVP vote getter among pitchers. Any honest look at these past four years demonstrates, clearly, that there has been no anti-Yankees bias. It's impossible to claim there was one when some Yankees are taking home the hardware and others are also receiving consideration for the award.
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In 2021, Shohei Ohtani won the MVP. He was the league's WAR leader. He deserved the award.
Aaron Judge was 8th in the league in WAR. In spite of that, he finished 4th in the voting.
Gerrit Cole, who was the runner-up in the Cy Young Award, also received an MVP vote. No pitcher received more MVP votes than Cole who was tied with two other pitchers in MVP voting.
CONCLUSION - Again, there is no evidence in any bias. It would be impossible to cite anti-Yankee bias here. It simply does not exist. Aaron Judge received more votes than his stats really said he should.
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In 2020, Jose Abreu won the MVP. The league's WAR leader was actually Shane Bieber, a pitcher. The position player with the highest WAR was D.J. LeMahieu, a Yankee, who finished third in the voting.
This is the type of voting that those who wish to claim an anti-Yankees bias turn to. They claim that a Yankee who should have won an award didn't. But, they make a weak case here.
D.J. LeMahieu led the league in WAR in 2020 with 3.0 WAR. Jose Abreu was just behind at 2.7. It was not as if LeMahieu crushed the competition. There was a strong argument to be made for Abreu. (Also of note - this was a shortened season so WAR totals are less impressive being that there was only a 60-game season.)
LeMahieu played in 50 games that year. Abreu played in all 60. For a shortened season, that 10-game gap is gigantic. LeMahieu led the league in batting, OBP, and OPS. Abreu led the league in games, hits, runs batted in, and slugging. He was also 4th in batting and second in home runs.
Overall, LeMahieu batted .364/10/27
Abreu was .317/19/60
Luke Voit, who led the league in homers in 2020 also received MVP votes. He finished 9th in overall voting.
CONCLUSION - D.J. LeMahieu did not win the MVP Award, but it was not because of anti-Yankees bias. It was because Jose Abreu also had a very good year and by some measures a much better one. Eliminating the anti-Yankees claim here is the fact that Luke Voit also finished in the top 10 of vote getters.
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SUMMATION - This article demonstrates clearly that there has been no anti-Yankees bias in the MVP voting this decade. It would be impossible to argue otherwise. The facts speak to my conclusion very clearly.
There will be more to come in future articles (for example why it made perfect sense to award the 1978 MVP to Jim Rice over Ron Guidry and why Pee Wee Reese did deserve to go into the Hall of Fame well before Phil Rizzuto). In fact, I will show how fans of other teams (such as the Detroit Tigers) could also make similar erroneous claims that the writers are against them, not the Yankees. Stay tuned.
