Unfair Bias Could Harm Francisco Lindor's MVP Hopes, Per Insider

An insider believes New York Mets superstar Francisco Lindor may be affected by a strange and unfair bias during the NL MVP voting race.

Sep 8, 2024; New York City, New York, USA; New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor (12) at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images / Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

The consensus among the baseball community is that the 2024 NL MVP race is between two players: Los Angeles Dodgers' superstar DH Shohei Ohtani and New York Mets' star shortstop Francisco Lindor.

Both players have produced spectacular seasons. However, the most common argument made when deciding who deserves MVP is that, while Ohtani has objectively stronger hitting statistics than Lindor, Ohtani (who isn't pitching this season due to his ongoing recovery from Tommy John surgery) doesn't play in the field while Lindor will likely win a Gold Glove for his elite play at shortstop.

While Lindor's defensive impact is much greater, there's also the fact that Ohtani will likely steal 50 bases by the end of the regular season, while Lindor currently has 27 steals.

Yet, Jon Heyman of the New York Post wrote in a September 8 article that the MVP race might not come down to how Ohtani and Lindor have played, but instead where they play.

"And, frankly, Ohtani will likely win because the East Coast Bias is a figment of someone’s jealous imagination. Yes, totally fake news," Heyman wrote.

"East Coast bias is so weak that, if anything, it’s turned around — yes, there just might be a West Coast Bias — just check the history."

Heyman goes on to note how there have been 33 West Coast-based players who've won MVP since the Mets became a team in 1962.

He also added that "not one of 63 NL MVPs since the Mets started playing was a Met," despite New York icons Carlos Beltran and David Wright having season-long WARs (8.2 for Beltran in 2006 and 8.3 for Wright in 2007) that were significantly higher than the players who won MVP in those seasons.

Then again, the MVP's in those two seasons (Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins) were on the Philadelphia Phillies — another East Coast team.

So maybe there isn't an East Coast bias so much as there's an anti-Mets bias when it comes to MVP voting. Although Lindor would be harmed by both.

While MVP voting takes place before the postseason begins, the results are not announced until after the World Series. So Mets fans will need to wait until November to see whether Lindor will break their team's franchise-long MVP drought.