How Does MLB MVP Voting Work? I Went Through the Last 28 MVP Votes

The MLB MVP is picked by 30 baseball writers in each league, and every one of them ranks 10 players. A first-place vote is worth 14 points, second is worth 9, and it drops by one point per spot down to 1 point for 10th. Whoever has the most points wins. That's the whole system. The instructions printed on the ballot haven't changed since the first one in 1931 (BBWAA voting FAQ).

The 2026 winners get announced on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT) on MLB Network. The finalists came out on Nov. 2: Yordan Alvarez, Junior Caminero and Bobby Witt Jr. in the AL, and Pete Crow-Armstrong, Shohei Ohtani and Brice Turang in the NL (MLB.com).

The rules are short, but how they play out is less obvious. So I pulled the voting results for every MVP race from 2012 through 2025 off Baseball-Reference, 28 races in all, to see how the points actually decide things.

How does MLB MVP voting work? Two writers from each MLB city in a league vote, 30 per league. Each ranks 10 players. First place gets 14 points, then 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. The player with the most points wins. Ballots are due before the postseason starts, so only the regular season counts.

01 Who Votes for MLB MVP

Voters are members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Two writers from each MLB city get picked by their local chapter and approved by the BBWAA's secretary-treasurer. Writers in AL cities vote for AL awards and writers in NL cities vote for NL awards. With 15 teams in each league, that's 30 voters per award. Most are beat writers who travel with a team, though some chapters use columnists or backup writers (BBWAA).

A few things people get wrong:

• Players, managers and fans don't vote. It's writers only.

• Some writers can't vote. The BBWAA says outlets like the Los Angeles Times and New York Times don't let their writers vote, because of a perceived conflict of interest.

• Nobody votes after the finalists come out. The finalists are just the top three in points. As CBS Sports put it, the ballots have already been counted and the league is revealing the top three before the winner.

The BBWAA has published the full results on its website since 2012, which is why I started my count there.

02 How the Points Add Up

The point scale is from the BBWAA's FAQ. Look at the top of it. The gap between first and second is 5 points. Every other step down is 1 point. A first-place vote is a big deal. The rest of the ballot still adds up, though, because 30 writers fill in all 10 spots.

The most a player can get is 420 points, which is 30 first-place votes times 14. That's a unanimous MVP.

Writers have to fill in all 10 spots, and they can't split a spot between two players. The ballot also tells them, "A 10th-place vote can influence the outcome of an election."

What the Ballot Tells Voters

This is where every MVP argument starts. The BBWAA ballot says there's "no clear-cut definition of what Most Valuable means," and it leaves it to each voter. It gives five rules, unchanged since 1931:

• Actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense.

• Number of games played.

• General character, disposition, loyalty and effort.

• Former winners are eligible.

• Members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.

It also says the MVP doesn't need to come from a playoff team, only regular-season play counts, and pitchers and designated hitters are both eligible.

That's it. No formula, no stat requirement. If you've ever wondered why one writer's MVP ballot looks nothing like another's, that's why. I like it this way. "Valuable" means different things to different people, and 30 people arguing about it in public is better than one number deciding it.

03 How Points Decided the 2025 AL MVP

The 2025 AL race shows the system better than any explanation. Aaron Judge beat Cal Raleigh, 355 points to 335 (BBWAA).

Every one of the 30 writers put Judge and Raleigh first and second, in one order or the other. So the 20-point margin came entirely from the first-place split. Judge had four more first-place votes, and each one was worth 5 more points than a second-place vote. Four times 5 is 20.

As a Yankees fan, I'll take it. But it shows how close a 17-13 split really is.

04 What 28 MVP Votes Show

Here's what I found going through every AL and NL MVP vote from 2012 through 2025. The vote totals are from Baseball-Reference's awards voting pages. One note: in 2012 there were 16 NL teams and 14 AL teams, so the voter counts were different that year.

A few things jumped out.

Ohtani has made unanimous almost normal. Eight of the 28 races were unanimous, and Ohtani has half of them. The AP noted in 2025 that he was a unanimous MVP for the fourth time. We wrote about his second AL MVP back when it happened.

First-place votes usually tell you the winner. In every one of the 28 races, the winner had at least as many first-place votes as anyone else. The 5-point jump from second to first makes that hard to overcome.

WAR matters, but it doesn't decide it. The player with the highest Baseball-Reference WAR among everyone who got votes won 15 of the 28. In 7 of the other 13, the WAR leader was a starting pitcher, like Jacob deGrom in 2018 and Cristopher Sánchez in 2025. Pitchers are eligible, but voters rarely pick one. The only pure pitcher to win in this stretch was Clayton Kershaw in 2014. WAR values on Baseball-Reference get revised over time, so these are today's numbers, not necessarily what voters saw. If you want the stats voters lean on for hitters and pitchers, our explainers on OPS and WHIP cover two of them.

05 When the 10th Spot Matters

The closest MVP vote in my 28-race sample was the 2017 NL race. Giancarlo Stanton beat Joey Votto, 302 points to 300. They each had 10 first-place votes. Stanton had 10 second-place votes to Votto's 9, and the points from third place down left him two ahead (BBWAA). MLB.com called it the closest MVP vote since 1979, when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell tied.

Source: Baseball-Reference awards voting pages, 2012 through 2025.

That's what the BBWAA means when it tells voters every spot can matter. If a single writer who had Stanton second and Votto third had flipped them, it would have ended in a tie.

06 When Is the MLB MVP Announced?

Ballots are due before the postseason, so the playoffs don't count. That's why the Brewers' World Series title can't help Brice Turang's case. The BBWAA reveals the top three about a week before the winners, then announces one award a night on MLB Network. Here's the 2026 schedule, from MLB.com:

All are scheduled for 7 p.m. ET. Ballot sizes and points are from the BBWAA FAQ. The FAQ doesn't cover the new Relief Pitcher of the Year award yet, and I couldn't confirm its ballot format from the BBWAA, so I left it blank.

The 2026 MVP Finalists

MLB.com calls Alvarez and Crow-Armstrong the heavy favorites. If they win, it'll be the first time since 2020 that neither Judge nor Ohtani won the award. The Yankees do have a 2026 finalist, though: Cam Schlittler is up for AL Cy Young on Nov. 11 after leading the AL with a 1.95 ERA.

07 Questions People Are Asking

Who votes for MLB MVP? Members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Two writers from each MLB city vote in their own league, so 30 voters for the AL award and 30 for the NL.

How many points is a first-place MVP vote? 14. Second place is worth 9, and each spot after that is worth one fewer, down to 1 point for 10th.

When is the MLB MVP announced? The 2026 MVPs will be announced Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, at 7 p.m. ET on MLB Network.

Do playoff games count for MVP? No. Writers submit ballots before the postseason begins, and the ballot says only regular-season performance counts.

Can a pitcher win MVP? Yes. The ballot says all players are eligible, including pitchers. Clayton Kershaw won the 2014 NL MVP. Voters rarely pick pitchers, though; Kershaw was the only pure pitcher to win between 2012 and 2025.

What does a unanimous MVP mean? Every voter put the same player first. With 30 voters, that's 420 points. Ohtani has done it four times.

Can you win MVP without the most first-place votes? It's possible under a points system, but it didn't happen once from 2012 through 2025.

08 Final Thoughts

Points decide the MVP, but in practice first place usually decides it. A first-place vote is worth 5 more points than second, and in 28 straight races the winner never had fewer first-place votes than the runner-up. The rest of the ballot only took over once, in 2017, when Stanton and Votto split the first-place votes 10-10 and the second spot broke the tie.

So on Nov. 12, look at the first-place votes before anything else. For how MVP works in another sport, see our take on whether Luka Doncic will win NBA MVP, where the 65-game rule changes the math.

How I put this together: the voting rules and point scale are from the BBWAA's voting FAQ. The 28 MVP races are from Baseball-Reference's awards voting pages for 2012 through 2025, pulled on Nov. 8, 2026, with the 2017 NL and 2025 AL totals checked against the BBWAA's own results pages. The 2026 schedule and finalists are from MLB.com.