Fight Night: Mookie Betts vs. Ronald Acuña Jr. for MVP
I don’t know about everyone else, but for me, trying to guess who will win a future award in baseball is a fool’s errand. Injuries happen, stats fluctuate, and the season is just too damn long. In some cases, what happens before the All-Star break can almost feel like a distant memory.
Consider the 2023 National League MVP race: On August 4, Ronald Acuña Jr. had -650 odds to win the award after becoming the first player in MLB history to post at least 20 home runs and 50 stolen bases before August. At the time, Freddie Freeman and Matt Olson were second and third respectively in the race. Mookie Betts was nowhere to be found.
Just a week ago, Acuña Jr. still held a sizeable lead at -400 with Betts and Freeman following at +650. Now, it’s a different story.
The NL MVP race felt like a shoo-in at the All-Star break, but with a little over month left in the season, the fight is as even as it’s been. Betts and Acuña Jr. are now battling it out as the best players in their respective teams, and unless Freeman’s odds change (which they definitely might), it looks like that could stay the same. Acuña Jr. still leads but only by a thread, and just two days ago, Mookie held the lead for the first time all year.
Due to this sudden two-man battle, I want to look at who holds the edge in some of the major categories: including hitting and running. By using this Deadliest Warrior-style format, we can see who truly has the slight edge heading into the final month. Let’s go!
Hitting
The way I determine if someone is a great hitter in the MLB is if I’m rocking back-and-forth in my chair when they come up to bat in a pressurized situation against my favorite team. It happened on Saturday when Betts came up against the Boston Red Sox with bases loaded and two outs in the ninth inning down 7-4. He thankfully flew out to the warning track in center field to end the game, but I watched that entire at-bat through the gaps of my fingers as if I was anticipating a jump scare in a horror movie.
Both Betts and Acuña Jr. have reached that point where it seems like could get a hit every time they are up to the plate.
A major reason why Betts is now the MVP favorite is because he’s been more impregnable in August than Keanu Reeves was in all of the John Wick movies. He’s batting an incredible .563 over the past two weeks and .464 in August. That 30-day mark is by the far the best in the league and he’s doing it with a respectable 14 % strikeout rate, a monstrous .814 slugging percentage (also first in the league during that span), and an unbelievable 260 wRC+ (the average is 100). Those are like MLB The Show MyPlayer stats when the difficulty is on rookie.
Acuña Jr. has been no slouch during that same time period, either. He’s basically batted his season average (.333) during August and has a lower strikeout rate and higher walk rate than Mookie. His wRC+ is not quite Mookie’s, but it’s still above league average (160).
Let’s pull the curtain back even more and look at their major hitting stats over the 2023 season as of August 28.
- Home runs: 28 for Acuña Jr., 35 for Betts
- Batting average: .330 for Acuña Jr., .315 for Betts
- On-Base Percentage: .413 for Acuña Jr., .407 for Betts
- RBIs: 74 for Acuña Jr., 93 for Betts
- K%: 12.3 % for Acuña Jr., 15.5 % for Betts
- BB%: 11.4 % for Acuña Jr., 12.9 % for Betts
- Slugging: .562 for Acuña Jr., .611 for Betts
- BABIP: .341 for Acuña Jr., .321 for Betts
Looking at those hard stats, everything looks pretty even. Both Betts and Acuña Jr. are in the 90th percentile in every major hitting category. It’s tough to determine who has the edge.
There are a few things to consider when thinking about the hitting stats of each player. For one, Acuña Jr. has definitely had a more consistent year at the plate. Look at any of his major hitting stats on Baseball Reference on a month-to-month basis, and you’ll see very little discrepancy.
Mookie, on the other hand, began the year fairly quiet, batting .235 in March/April and .269 in May. After batting .276 with an OPS of .964 in the first half of the year, he is now hitting .400 with a 1.140 OPS in the second half of the season.
The other thing to consider is RBIs. Both players are leadoff hitters on their teams, meaning they aren’t going to put up the same amount of RBIS as a Matt Olson or Pete Alonso; power hitters that benefit from hitting third or fourth in the order. Understanding that makes Mookie’s 93 RBI total look extremely impressive.
Looking at this from a broad point of view, it’s difficult to determine who has the hitting edge. Both have power, patience, and high contact ability, plus the numbers to back it up. Even looking at their clutch stats, both are batting well above .300 in games that are considered “Late & Close.”
I have to give the slight edge to Mookie, though, because his numbers just pop more, especially as the games continue to matter more.
Running
This one’s easy: it has to be Acuña Jr. since he leads the league in stolen bases (59) and has a 97 % success rate (Mookie only has 10 SB). In this regard, Acuña Jr. is the quintessential leadoff hitter; someone who gets on base and terrorizes the paths relentlessly.
His innate ability to steal bases has translated in a lot of runs for the Braves, who lead the league in that category. As of Aug. 28, Acuña Jr. has 115 runs, which is also most in the league. Betts is second with 110.
From a more advanced perspective, Acuña Jr. still dominates the running category. His speed score is top 10 in the league, trailing only bona fide speedsters, and he ranks first in wSB, which estimates the number of runs a player contributes to their team by stealing bases. He’s more elusive than Batman at night.
Mookie, on the other hand, ranks 53rd in stolen bases among qualified hitters and 71st in wSB.
The lowdown
If this were a fight, I think it would go 10 rounds. Acuña Jr. is the best player on the best team in the league and Mookie’s torrid second half has coincided with a monster run by the Dodgers (22-4 in August so far).
Despite Mookie’s slow start to the year, he actually leads the league in WAR at 7.3 (Acuña Jr. has a 6.2). In other words, Betts has carried the Dodgers just a little bit more since their lineup is not as talented as Atlanta’s. But that doesn’t take anything away from Acuña Jr., who really hasn’t had a bad month all season, much like the Braves.
It’s a coin flip at this point but holistically, I have to give the MVP edge to Mookie right now, not only because of he’s scorching hitters like Bowser, but also because he’s been able to slot into multiple positions when the Dodgers needed him, including second base, shortstop and right field. He’s basically doing everything except pitch for them, which is important for a Dodgers team that is far from perfect this year.
But, as we’ve seen, things can change at the drop of a dime. I wouldn’t be surprised if two weeks from now, this analysis piece doesn’t matter because Freddie Freeman is the favorite all-of-the-sudden. We can never be sure in such a long season.
