Introduction
After swinging and missing twice on the 2024 ALCS MVP Award and 2024 NLCS MVP Award, the MVP voters finally connected with their selection of Freddie Freeman of the Los Angeles Dodgers as the 2024 World Series MVP. Well, it was a middle-middle meatball that they should not have missed. Even without the FCB statistics Freeman was the obvious choice. But it is still worth it to review just how good Freeman was and give the voters some credit.
The MVP selectors got it wrong the last time the Dodgers won the World Series in 2020 when the World Series MVP Award should have gone to Mookie Betts instead of Corey Seager. No mistake this time. Freeman made sure of that with his play.
Freeman was the Obvious Choice
If you followed the 2024 World Series, then you know that Freeman was the best hitter in the series on either team. As seen in Table 1, he led the Dodgers in offensive skill as measured by OPS (1.126). His 12 RBI in the series also tied Bobby Richardson of the 1960 New York Yankees for most in a World Series, and Freeman accomplished that feat in five games instead of Richardson’s seven. Hitting a HR in each of the first four games to set and surpass some World Series records will do that for your RBI statistics. The next most HR in the series by a Dodger was 1. Freeman’s 1.06 WPA is supported by his game-1-winning walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning (the first ever in a World Series!) that yielded a whopping 0.647 WPA alone! By SRC he yielded nearly twice the run production of the next-best Dodger Betts. The only meaningful offensive statistic that he did not lead was runs, but even in this category he was only 1 run behind Tommy Edman’s team-leading 5 runs.
Betts and Edman had the next best cases for series MVP. Freeman, Betts, and Edman were the only three Dodgers to post positive OSWC in all four Dodger wins, and all four had their moments. For example, Betts batted in what turned into the game-winning run in game 5 with his sacrifice fly, and Edman’s single earlier in that inning was critical for the scoring in that inning.
Yet, Freeman was either the sole leader or co-leader in OSWC for each of the Dodgers’ wins. His selection as MVP was so obvious that some fans were tentatively guessing his selection by the end of game 2 and then fully committed to the prediction at the end of game 3. The MVP Award was his award to lose if the Dodgers pulled out the victory, which they did in dramatic, come-from-behind fashion in game 5.
Conclusion
Sometimes the MVP selection is obvious but wrong, but sometimes what the eye sees is supported by the statistics. That is the case with Freeman’s section as the 2024 World Series MVP. Congratulations to Freeman for his stellar performance.
[Note: SRC and OSWC used in this article were from hand-coded play-by-play rather than the machine learning. The automated machine-learning values may change slightly.]