It's MLB awards week! Rookie of the Year and Manager of the Year have been announced for both leagues, with the Cy Young awards coming on Wednesday and the crown jewel -- each league's MVP -- announced Thursday.
We've been heading in this direction over the past decade, but it's now official: The Most Valuable Player Award has become, to the delight of analytics aficionados across baseball land, the best player in the league award. Traditionally, the writers based MVP honors on some sort of undefined fusion of on-field performance and team performance. The MVP winner usually -- but not always -- came from a playoff team.