MVP

## Overview

The **MVP** (also known as **The Jocinda**) is an honor given to the best player in each BBL season. It is analogous to Major League Baseball's Most Valuable Player Award. It is typically determined by the best offensive stats, although if a player is game-changing on defense, that may have a slight effect on the voting as well. The award is named after Jocinda Smith, whose nickname in the game is "MVP". The winner gets the MVP emoji named after them in the Discord server.

## Process

Each coach who participates in the BBL season is allowed to vote for each of the three awards, although they do not have to. On occasion, votes are given to server members who did not participate but have in the past and/or have been following the BBL season closely despite not playing. Each voter is allowed to vote for three players. A first place vote awards three points, a second place vote awards two, and a third place vote is one point. Whichever player gathers the most votes is the winner! In the event of a tie, the two players would share co-MVP awards, this happened for the first time in Season 8.

## Winners

Record refers to the team's record. Starting in Season 10, awards were given to each conference rather than leaguewide. They are labeled by first initial for American League, National League, Frontyard League, and Backyard League.

Jay Green's Season 7 MVP award was vacated at the end of Season 10 due to cheating allegations.

## History

The MVP usually goes to a player on a well-performing team. The MVP has made the World Series five times: Pablo in Season 1, Jay in Season 2, Jane in Season 5, and Cheryl in Seasons 6 and 8. Two of those won the World Series: Jay and Cheryl in Season 6. Only thrice has the MVP gone to a player on a team with a losing record, Zenon in Season 8, Lindsy in Season 9, and Cheryl in the Backyard League in Season 10. Zenon drove in almost 75% of his team's total runs that season. Lindsy's numbers were boosted by a massive stat line in Week 12, when she went 10-11 with 6 home runs and 19 RBIs, although she had solid numbers all season long. The Backyard League was noted for having its top teams evenly spread out the offensive wealth with most of the superstar players carrying the worse teams.

Cheryl Reynolds became the first three-time MVP after her Season 10 Backyard League trophy. Additionally, there are three multiple-MVP winning coaches, as crazyei8hts and aesnop have each won twice, while gmchappe has the most MVPs, with three.

## Criticism

The MVP Award has received some slight criticism over the years, with two most notable:

* Some voters believe that RBIs and home runs are too heavily favored when considering MVP, with some going as far to call it the "power hitting award". This has some merit, as every MVP winner from Season 3 onwards has either led the league in home runs and/or RBIs. These critics claim that some coaches intentionally stop runners on base in order to set their big star up for more RBIs. Proponents of the voting, on the other hand, state that home runs and RBIs are some of the easiest stats by which to judge a good player, and teams ultimately need to score runs in order to win. Whoever drives in a lot of runs will be likely to be on a winning team. As for stalling runners to set up RBIs, no leaguewide has been taken to combat such strategy.
* There has been some debate about the legitimacy of one or more MVP campaigns, but so far no action has been taken to expunge any records from the books.

Overall, most coaches agree that voting for the MVP is all in good fun, and the criticism has not affected the integrity of the award.