Donaldson: MVP should come from winning team

When the voting members of the BBWAA fill out their ballots for Most Valuable Player next month, they'll pore over stats, old and new, in their effort to recognize the most deserving candidate, but the reigning American League MVP believes there's another crucial element to consider.

"You gotta win," Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson recently told Jon Heyman of Today's Knuckleball.

Should the voters also espouse that viewpoint, Donaldson could add a second MVP award to his mantel in the near future. With less than a month left in the season, only two players in the American League have accrued more WAR than Donaldson, and just one of them - Mookie Betts - plays for a contender. (Though Toronto dropped to second in the AL East on Wednesday, the Blue Jays now hold the first wild-card spot and remain just one game back of the division-leading Boston Red Sox).

"Don't get me wrong, (Mike) Trout and (Jose) Altuve are both great (players)," Donaldson said. "But that’s my idea of valuable."

The notion that the MVP has to come from a winner has been widely denounced in recent years, but voters - who aren't given a clear-cut definition of what "valuable" means - continue to favor candidates from winning teams. Last year, Trout bested Donaldson in WAR, OBP, slugging percentage, and isolated power, but, having provided all that value for a team that finished third in its division, received only seven first-place votes for the AL MVP award. Of the last dozen MVP awards handed out, meanwhile, all but one have gone to players from teams that made it to October.