Josh Donaldson's Two-Way Play Has Justified MVP Case

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

Josh Donaldson, the Blue Jays' all-world third baseman, can no longer step up to the plate at Rogers Centre without cascading chants of "M-V-P" raining down on him from the suddenly packed stands. Of the many stars that now occupy positions in the Jays' universe this season, his has burned brightest. He showed why once again Tuesday night in Philadelphia by torching Phillies pitchers for a walk, single, and two home runs in his five trips to the plate. Donaldson, who drove in four runs, blasted the Jays into the lead with a first-inning homer, and again in the sixth, turning a 5–4 deficit into a 7–5 lead with a three-run shot.

Such incredible exploits haven't exactly been the norm, or Donaldson would have 200 home runs by now, but the MVP chants are certainly on point—even, somewhat surprisingly, in a world where Mike Trout exists.

Trout, of course, is the 24-year-old superstar of the Los Angeles Angels—whom the Jays will visit for a series this weekend that's crucial to both clubs, as they try to chase down the leaders in their respective divisions and avoid the wild card play-in game they'd both be slated for if the season ended today—and is cruising toward his fourth straight season of eight wins above replacement or higher. But a funny thing happened on the way to Trout walking away with this year's American League MVP award, and that's Donaldson, who now sits in a total dead heat with him—both players, as of Wednesday morning, are at 6.7 WAR, per FanGraphs.

According to the Baseball Reference version of the metric, Trout has nearly a half-win edge, at 7.1 to 6.7, but the MVP isn't merely the award for the player with the best WAR—though, given that WAR is the best available measurement of the total offensive and defensive contribution a player makes to his team, maybe it should be—and the margin for error is significant enough that Trout and Donaldson are in a virtual tie.

That, of course, will lead voters to look at other factors. Should the Angels fall out of the playoff race and the Jays make the postseason, you'll almost certainly see the award come to Toronto, even if Trout ends up being worth more wins to his club.

On the surface, that would seem to be a tremendous thing for Donaldson and the Jays and their fans, as the club hasn't had an MVP winner since George Bell's somewhat dubious victory over Detroit's Alan Trammell in 1987.

The acquisition of Donaldson in a trade with the Oakland Athletics has looked like an absolute coup. Brett Lawrie, the most famous of the four players going the other way, has struggled in his first season in Oakland, sitting just a shade above replacement level, with uncharacteristically poor defence, and a bat that's still disappointingly average. Donaldson, meanwhile, has brought fantastic defence—the defensive component of FanGraphs' WAR rates him the third-best defensive third baseman in the game this season, in addition to being the best one at the plate, while Baseball Reference's defensive WAR ranks him fourth—and a bat that looks even better now that he's not playing his home games in the spacious confines of Oakland's O.co Coliseum.

Donaldson leads the Jays in traditional stats like home runs and RBIs, and the newfangled advanced ones, too, posting a 157 wRC+ as of Wednesday morning. His 6.7 WAR dwarfs all of his Blue Jays teammates, with the next highest being Russell Martin at 2.8. And while the cold-hearted cynics of the Jays' fan base may wonder what all this success will mean for his salary as he hits arbitration for a second of four times this winter—having an MVP award certainly carries a lot of weight in that process (for example, Ryan Howard was awarded a $10 million salary from the Phillies in his first time through arbitration, one year removed from his 2006 MVP season; Donaldson lost his case with the Jays last winter, and makes $4.3 million this year, despite coming off a pair of six-plus win seasons)—or the possibility of the club extending him beyond those four years, in the meantime it has been a spectacular, surreal thing to watch.

If the Jays fans who make their way to Anaheim for this weekend's games pick up the new tradition of chanting "M-V-P" for Donaldson when he makes his way to the plate, they may be met with derision from the local fans who are so used to it being assumed that their own superstar should walk away with the award (even though Trout only has one to his name so far in his young career, having been controversially beaten twice by Detroit's Miguel Cabrera despite all evidence pointing to Trout's superiority). In fact, those Jays fans certainly will be met with derision.

But they won't be wrong. Whether or not it ends with any actual hardware, Donaldson is truly having a season for the ages.