Claim: Alex Rodriguez plays baseball.

The Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award -LRB- MVP -RRB- is an annual Major League Baseball -LRB- MLB -RRB- award , given to one outstanding player in the American League and one in the National League . Since 1931 , it has been awarded by the Baseball Writers ' Association of America -LRB- BBWAA -RRB- . The winners receive the Kenesaw Mountain Landis Memorial Baseball Award , which became the official name of the award in 1944 , in honor of the first MLB commissioner , who served from 1920 until his death on November 25 , 1944 .   MVP voting takes place before the postseason , but the results are not announced until after the World Series . The BBWAA began by polling three writers in each league city in 1938 , reducing that number to two per league city in 1961 . The BBWAA does not offer a clear-cut definition of what `` most valuable '' means , instead leaving the judgment to the individual voters .   First basemen , with 34 winners , have won the most MVPs among infielders , followed by second basemen -LRB- 16 -RRB- , third basemen -LRB- 15 -RRB- , and shortstops -LRB- 15 -RRB- . Of the 24 pitchers who have won the award , 15 are right-handed while 9 are left-handed . Walter Johnson , Carl Hubbell , and Hal Newhouser are the only pitchers who have won multiple times , Newhouser winning consecutively in 1944 and 1945 .   Hank Greenberg , Stan Musial , Alex Rodriguez , and Robin Yount have won at different positions , while Rodriguez is the only player who has won the award with two different teams at two different positions . Barry Bonds has won the most often -LRB- seven times -RRB- and the most consecutively -LRB- 2001 -- 04 -RRB- . Jimmie Foxx was the first player to win multiple times ; 9 players have won three times , and 19 have won twice . Frank Robinson is the only player to win the award in both the American and National Leagues .   The award 's only tie occurred in the National League in 1979 , when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell received an equal number of points . There have been 18 unanimous winners , who received all the first-place votes . The New York Yankees have the most winning players with 22 , followed by the St. Louis Cardinals with 17 winners . The award has never been presented to a member of the following four teams : Arizona Diamondbacks , Miami Marlins , New York Mets , and Tampa Bay Rays . The most recent recipients are Mike Trout in the American League and Kris Bryant in the National League .   In recent decades , pitchers have rarely won the award . When Justin Verlander won the AL award in 2011 , he became the first pitcher in either league to be named the MVP since Dennis Eckersley in 1992 . Verlander also became the first starting pitcher to win this award since Roger Clemens had accomplished the feat in 1986 . The National League went even longer without an MVP award to a pitcher -- after Bob Gibson won in 1968 , no pitcher in that league was named MVP until Clayton Kershaw in 2014 .