As the 2017 regular season winds down, the debate over major league awards like Most Valuable Player (MVP) will intensify. With that in mind let’s take a look at the MVP race using the Total Runs leaderboard. Total Runs is a statistic created by Baseball Info Solutions that combines offense, defense, baserunning, and an adjustment that allows for comparison across positions into one number in order to evaluate the total contribution of each player*.

Let’s start with the American League (AL) Total Runs Leaderboard. Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez have had tremendous seasons on an Indians team that has refused to lose consecutive games for well over a month now; Aaron Judge has shattered the AL rookie home run record to go along with a first half performance that saw him have an OPS of 1.139; while Jose Altuve has been the most consistent player on a Houston Astros team that has a chance to win 100 games for the first time since 1998. The remaining two players on the AL Total Runs Leaderboard, Mookie Betts and Andrelton Simmons, aren’t quite as obvious. While the other AL Total Runs leaders are offensive monsters, Betts and Simmons derive much of their value through their sublime defense. Simmons and Betts rank first and second in 2017 Defensive Runs Saved with 33 and 31 runs, respectively, providing their teams excellent defense on a nightly basis.