Andrew McCutchen won the NL MVP on Thursday, earning 28 of 30 first-place votes. It so happens that the two remaining votes belonged to the two representatives from the ever-obnoxious St. Louis media, who both went with Cardinals' catcher Yadier Molina.


It was an impressive act of homerism, but isn't homerism pretty standard for MVP voting? The BBWAA has made its ballots public for the last two years; the chart above shows, for the four MVP votes since then, which players have gotten the biggest homer bump from their city. I measured this as the difference between each player's MVP points per voter—for example, McCutchen received 409 MVP points this election, or 13.6 per voter—and the MVP points per voter from the player's home city.* As a reminder, a first-place vote is worth 14 points, second place is worth nine, third place is worth eight, etc.


Here's a breakdown of the top 10:

Yadier Molina, St. Louis (2013): St. Louis wins! This year Molina came in third overall with 219 points (7.30 per voter). Both Rick Hummel and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch listed him first (14 points), representing the only two first-place votes that Andrew McCutchen did not receive. As a final "fuck you" to Pittsburgh and baseball in general, Rick Hummel listed the Pirates' star third, behind Cardinals second baseman Matt Carpenter.

Ryan Braun, Milwaukee (2012): Braun came in second overall with 285 points (8.9 per voter). Both Tom Haudricourt and Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel listed him first (14 points)—the Brewers slugger received just three first-place votes in total.

Derek Jeter, New York (2012): Jeter came in seventh overall with 77 points (2.8 per voter). Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News listed him third (eight points), and George King of the New York Post listed him fifth (six points).


Josh Donaldson, Oakland (2013): Donaldson came in fourth overall with 222 points (7.4 per voter). John Hickey of the Oakland Tribune listed him first (14 points), and Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle listed him third (eight points).

Alex Rios, Chicago (2012): Rios came in 15th overall with 17 points (0.6 per voter). Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune listed him fifth (six points), and Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun-Times listed him ninth (two points).


Hunter Pence, San Francisco (2013): Pence came in 16th overall with 7 points (0.2 per voter). Alex Pavlovic of the San Jose Mercury News listed him eighth (three points), and Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle listed him ninth (two points).

Mike Trout, Los Angeles (2013): Trout came in second overall with 282 points (9.4 per voter). Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports listed him first (14 points), and Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register listed him second (nine points). Kind of tough to knock this one.


Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay (2013): Longoria came in sixth overall with 103 points (3.4 per voter). Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times listed him fifth (six points), and Roger Mooney of the Tampa Tribune listed him sixth (five points).

Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles (2012): Kershaw came in 16th overall with 15 points (0.5 per voter). Mark Saxon of ESPN Los Angeles listed him seventh (four points), and Hirokazu Higuchi of Chunichi Shimbun listed him 10th (one point).


Chase Headley, San Diego (2012): Headley came in fifth overall with 127 points (4.0 per voter). John Maffei of the North County Times listed him fourth (seven points), and Scott Miller of CBS Sports listed him sixth (five points).