The MLB awards both an NL and AL MVP every season. The MVPs are determined by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BWAA). The actual voting occurs just before the MLB postseason, yet results are not announced until after the World Series. There are plenty of write-ups you’ll find around the internet, heck, even this site, that will give you advice on specific bets to make on the MVP futures race. However, we’re going to take a more “Macro approach” here. Zooming out a bit, we’ll provide some objective clues to give bettors a framework to use instead of focusing on specific picks.

Let’s lead off with the 2021 AL and NL MVP frontrunners/current odds (listed below, all in + lines based on BettingPros Consensus)

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When predicting the MVP, as with anything else, we should look to the past and reverse engineer our way to a baseline of options. Instead of viewing all the frontrunners above and working from there, let’s see how recent award winner’s odds were going in to the regular season to understand what actual MVP winner’s odds look like preseason.

As you can see above, rarely has the favorite actually ended up as the MVP. The NL MVP winner specifically seems to be an absolute crapshoot, averaging out to +3618 preseason odds, while the AL averaged out to +2017 preseason odds. Given this, it’s hard to view any of the top 2-4 favorites as a likely positive Expected Value (EV) play. That is, even if Trout ends up winning the 2021 MVP, as he’s a big favorite to do so, the payout isn’t worth the fact (we’ve discovered) big favorites don’t typically bring home the hardware. I would recommend working from the +800/+1000 and up.

After that, we can cross out any player on a team with a low win projection, given that MVPs rarely come from players sitting at home in October. That leaves us with the following options:

Here is the last but most critical part. It’s quite a labor-intensive process but has the chance to have the greatest impact. Although significant rules prohibit the BWAA members from DIRECTLY disclosing their selections (trust me, I tried), the MVP picks are made by humans. Humans with Twitter accounts. We will be running a formal study documenting keywords each voter uses relative to MVP candidates, but in the meantime, I would suggest doing your homework and investigating their content if you are planning to make a serious bet.

Below you can find the entire roster of the AL and NL MVP selectors, along with links to their bio/social media accounts.

Name	Affiliation	Team(s) covered	Job description
Andrew Wagner	Wisconsin State Journal	Brewers	Beat Writer
Anthony Castrovince	MLB.com	All	Columnist
Barry M. Bloom	Forbes	All	Columnist
Bill Plunkett	Orange County Register	Dodgers	Beat Writer
Bill Shaikin	Los Angeles Times	All	National writer
Bob Dutton	At large	Mariners	Beat Writer
Bob Elliott	Canadian Baseball Network	All, Blue Jays	National writer
C. Trent Rosecrans	The Athletic	Reds	Beat Writer
Clark Spencer	Miami Herald	Marlins	Beat Writer
Dan Hayes	The Athletic	Twins	Beat Writer
Dan Szymborski	ESPN.com	All	Columnist
Dejan Kovacevic	DKPittsburghSports.com	Pirates	Columnist
Eric Stephen	SB Nation	All	National writer
Evan Drellich	The Athletic	All	National writer
Evan Grant	Dallas Morning News	Rangers	Beat Writer
Grant Brisbee	The Athletic	Giants	Columnist
J.P. Hoornstra	Southern California News Group	Dodgers	Beat Writer
Jane Lee	MLB.com	A’s	Beat Writer
Jason Foster	The Sporting News	All	Editor
Jay Jaffe	Sports Illustrated	All	Columnist
Jeff Fletcher	Orange County Register	Angels	Beat Writer
Jeff Passan	ESPN	All	National writer
Jim Alexander	Riverside Press Enterprise	Angels, Dodgers, Padres	Columnist
Jorge L. Ortiz	USA TODAY	All	National writer
Kyle Glaser	Baseball America	All	National writer
LaVelle E. Neal III	Minneapolis Star Tribune	Twins	Beat Writer
Leonte Landino	ESPN Deportes	All	Editor
Lou DiPietro	YES Network	Yankees	Beat writer
Lynn Henning	Detroit News	Tigers	Backup
Marc Topkin	Tampa Bay Times	Rays	Beat Writer
Mark Newman	At large	All	Editor
Mark Sheldon	MLB.com	Reds	Beat Writer
Mark Zuckerman	MASNsports.com	Nationals	Beat Writer
Matt Gelb	The Athletic	Phillies	Beat Writer
Matt Snyder	CBS Sports	All	National writer
Michael Axisa	CBS Sports	All	National writer
Mike Harrington	Buffalo News	Blue Jays	Columnist
Mike Petriello	MLB.com	All	Analyst
Nick Piecoro	The Arizona Republic	Diamondbacks	Beat Writer
Paul Sullivan	Chicago Tribune	Cubs, White Sox	Beat writer
Peter Abraham	The Boston Globe	Red Sox	Beat Writer
Rhett Bollinger	MLB.com	Angels	Beat Writer
Ricardo Montes	ESPN Deportes Miami	Marlins	Columnist
Rob Biertempfel	Pittsburgh Tribune-Review	Pirates	Beat Writer
Roberto Colon	El Nuevo Dia / Unanimo Deportes	All	National writer
Ryan Fagan	Sporting News	All	National Writer
Scott Lauber	Philadelphia Inquirer	Phillies	Beat Writer
Steve Buckley	The Athletic	Red Sox	Columnist
Ted Berg	At large	All	National writer
Tony DeMarco	FanRagSports.com	All	National writer
Tyler Kepner	New York Times	All	National writer
Zach Buchanan	The Athletic	Diamondbacks	Beat Writer
Zack Meisel	The Athletic	Indians	Beat Writer

In summary, when predicting MLB MVPs:

Ignore the top 2-4 favorites, and stick to the +2000 or above level
Eliminate players from likely low win total teams
Use human nature against the voters, and do your due diligence by finding clues on their Twitter accounts.

Given this strategy, we have whittled the positive EV selections down and will go a step further to find our final picks. Using Marcel Projections, excluding any player with under 30 HR projection, then considering OPS and Reliability, we find three picks in the +3000 category that we will invest in (Full Chart Below).

We suggest focusing the majority of your MLB MVP Futures bets on:

Jose Ramirez
Nelson Cruz
Manny Machado

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