We’ve covered Cy Young longshots, now it’s time to talk about the other highly variable Big 4 sports award: The two MLB MVPs. Granted, the names to win MVP from way down the odds board are not quite as chaotic as they are with Cy Young, but there still have been some massive longshots to take home the hardware in recent years and pay off some huge tickets. Today we’re looking at the three biggest MLB MVP longshots of the last 15 years, starting with the still-relevant Christian Yelich.
Biggest MLB MVP Longshots & 2024 MLB MVP Odds
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2018 NL MVP: Christian Yelich, Milwaukee Brewers (+15000)
It’s hard to blame oddsmakers for their preseason evaluation of the 2018 NL MVP race. The favorites were then-recent winners like Bryce Harper and Kris Bryant, while Christian Yelich was basically an afterthought. After all, the Marlins had just traded Yelich to the Brewers in the offseason after he gave them five decent but not impressive years.
Yelich’s Marlins tenure was one of expectations unmet. He was a first-round pick of theirs and, along with Giancarlo Stanton and Marcell Ozuna in the outfield, was one of their top prospects.
However, Yelich was never more than a pretty good player in Miami — not a bust, but certainly not a star either.
Well, the Brewers figured something out about Yelich, and he became arguably the best hitter in the league for two years. He took home back-to-back batting titles in 2018 and 2019, led the league in slugging, OPS and offensive WAR both of those years as well, and bagged himself the longest MVP win of the last two decades that first year in Milwaukee.
Then he followed it up with a runner-up MVP finish in 2019.
Yelich has since fallen off, but based on those two incredible seasons alone, he reputes as one of the most dangerous hitters in the game — and as a huge betting win for whoever took the swing at him for NL MVP in 2018.
2011 AL MVP: Justin Verlander, Detroit Tigers (+7500)
But this is not about Eckersley, it’s about Justin Verlander and his great and deserving 2011 MVP season.
Because it had been almost 20 years since the last pitcher MVP, Verlander’s preseason odds were +7500 even though he had established himself already as one of baseball’s best pitchers. He took that to another level in 2011, however, and made the longshot win undeniable.
In a season that saw three other players record at least 8.0 wins above replacement in the AL, Verlander beat them all with a league-leading 8.6. He topped the American League in wins, ERA, innings, strikeouts, ERA+ and WHIP, all while the Tigers won the AL Central.
Maybe it helped that the other players competing for MVP were, frankly, of lower name value (Jacoby Ellsbury, Jose Bautista and Curtis Granderson finished Nos. 2 through 4), but Verlander was no Dennis Eckersley — he genuinely earned that MVP that year.
2010 AL MVP: Josh Hamilton, Texas Rangers (+10000)
What was once the ultimate feel-good baseball story is now plainly not that, but hey, a longshot MVP is a longshot MVP if the winner is a good person or not.
Josh Hamilton’s path from addiction to sobriety was the talk of MLB back in 2008 when he made his first All-Star Game and put on a show in the Home Run Derby. However, it took a couple more years for him to get his hardware, as Hamilton spent half the season on the shelf with injury.
As a result, he was +10000 to win AL MVP in 2010, and Hamilton only went on to be the best baseball player on the planet that year. His 8.7 bWAR led all of MLB, as did his batting average, slugging percentage and OPS, and he was also a plus defensive player that year.
On top of all of that, the Rangers won the AL West en route to a World Series loss, their first playoff appearance since 1999.
Did Hamilton stick? Yes and no. He had a couple more really good seasons with Texas before relapsing, g a massively terrible contract with the Angels, playing poorly, going back to the Rangers, relapsing again and then retiring.
Plus, he’s done other quite bad things, so the carriage is plainly a pumpkin once again.
2024 MLB MVP Odds: Some Longshots From Each League
American League
National League
| Player | Team | Odds |
| Byron Buxton | Twins | +10000 |
| Cal Raleigh | Mariners | +15000 |
| Riley Greene | Tigers | +15000 |
| Daulton Varsho | Blue Jays | +15000 |
| Player | Team | Odds |
| William Contreras | Brewers | +8000 |
| Willson Contreras | Cardinals | +10000 |
| Nico Hoerner | Cubs | +10000 |
| C.J. Abrams | Nationals | +20000 |
There is quite the large discrepancy between the two leagues in of longshot MVP bets. The American League has at least two genuine MVP candidates with odds of +15000 or longer — Greene and Varsho are both top 3 in the AL in bWAR, and Raleigh is top 10. Buxton isn’t on their level at the moment, but +10000 is still strong enough odds for his power and potential to take off at any time. Greene and Varsho are the real gets here, however.
The NL is a different story. Everyone at the top of the MVP odds is also at the top of the statistical leaderboards pretty much everywhere, with Willson Contreras being the lone guy +10000 and up in the top 10 of the NL for WAR. He and his brother are tied at 1.3 wins above replacement, but William’s Brewers are good and the Cardinals are not, so William’s odds are slightly shorter. That +8000 isn’t bad, though.
