MLB insider's anti-Dodgers column about West Coast bias directly contradicts old MVP take

No matter who comes out of the NL MVP race on top this year — Shohei Ohtani or Francisco Lindor — we can expect to be saddled with think piece after think piece about why the other guy should've won for years to come. Despite how loud Mets fans have been getting on social media as their team ingratiates themselves further into the Wild Card race, the odds are still firmly in Ohtani's favor, and he'll have the honor in the bag the second he gets to 50-50.

But again, that won't stop Mets fans from crying about the injustice of it all in the aftermath. Jon Heyman has already started, piggybacking off of the viral craze of the Lindor-Ohtani debate with a new column bemoaning the "West Coast bias" that will apparently be the only thing to spur Ohtani to the third MVP win of his career.

Heyman cites Lindor's higher FanGraphs WAR (he has a lower Baseball Reference WAR than Ohtani) as a reason the race should be tighter than Heyman figures it will be, and makes reference to David Wright's 2007 8.3 WAR campaign, with the Mets star falling fourth in NL MVP voting behind Prince Fielder, Matt Holliday, and Jimmy Rollins, who had a 6.1 WAR, as a particular injustice.

Let's dig up some receipts though, shall we? Back in the offseason between the 2007 and 2008 seasons, Heyman wrote in support of Rollins' win, writing "Sorry, VORPies (Value Over Replacement Player, a now defunct stat replaced by WAR), Rollins was the right choice."

Jon Heyman makes a bad case for Francisco Lindor MVP over Shohei Ohtani, citing WAR and "West Coast bias"

Heyman also referred to the 33 West Coast players across both leagues who have won MVP since the Mets' first season in 1962 as some kind of 'gotcha' stat. But let's do the math there. If we're taking both leagues into account, there have been 100 MVP players over the last 62 years (15 of them have won more than once), and those 33 West Coasters make up almost exactly 1/3 of those players. Baseball divides the country into three regions. Is "West Coast bias" in the room with us?

In fact, most of the players who have won MVP since 1962 come from the large swath of the country that baseball just refers to as the 'Central.' As many Cincinnati Reds have won MVP as New York Yankees. Do we want to start talking about "Flyover States bias" now?

If Lindor doesn't win MVP, it won't be because the statheads can't agree on who has a higher WAR or because of locational bias that doesn't exist, it'll be because Ohtani has had a stronger season altogether and because 50-50, as much as Heyman tries to dismiss it in his column, is something that no one else in the history of the sport has ever done. It won't be about the fact that Ohtani is making more money, which Heyman also suggests. If anything, Ohtani would be beating the odds by becoming the first pure DH to ever win the award.

There are arguments for Lindor over Ohtani that make some sense, but this isn't one of them. Back to the drawing board now, Heyman.