How many games can an MLB player miss and still win an award?
Ahead of the 20232024 season, the National Basketball Association implemented a rule requiring players to play in at least 65 games in order to be eligible for endofseason awards such as league MVP, AllNBA honors, and Clutch Player of the to tackle two issues, tanking to increase draft lottery odds and fan discontent over load management, this benchmark has done nothing but generate scrutiny, as injuries have meant that many of the league's best players a list that this year may ultimately include Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Joki, Stephen Curry, Joel Embiid, Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards, and more will not meet that so, as the season enters its final two weeks, it is not the battle for postseason berths that have generated the most discussion in NBA circles, but this 65game Austin Wells Jersey, this is not an NBA blog, so why am I bringing this up? Well, this discourse got me thinking about Major League Baseball's own endofseason the league does not, and in truth, should never have a minimum number of games required to be eligible for awards starting pitchers by nature play fewer games than relievers, who play fewer games than catchers, who play fewer games than other members of the starting lineup the amount of time a player misses due to injury does tend to come up when discussing these awards pretty much every so, inspired by the NBA discourse, I decided to see how many games Major League Baseball players have historically needed to play in order to be treated as serious candidates for the three main endofseason awards: Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, and Rookie of the that end, I used the BaseballReference database to create an Excel spreadsheet well https://www.newyorkfanoutlet.com/Don_Mattingly_Jersey, Google Sheet listing all players who were top three finishers for each award from 2000 to 2025 i.e., those who would now be announced as finalists, although this is something that has only been done relatively gave me 15players who were considered serious contenders for the award by the voters of that theory, I could have expanded the list to all players who received votes, but I have a mountain of papers and midterms to grade, and had to draw a limit somewhere; 15names seemed a nice balance between large enough sample size that outliers will be drowned out and allow John to keep his sanity.So what did the data tell me? Well, my first run through the data, simply taking averages, gave me that, for total games, I removed the 2020 season from the calculation, while for the average, I changed the denominator for that season to 60.