Every World Series MVP Since 1955, From Johnny Podres to William Contreras

Who has won the most World Series MVP awards

• Sandy Koufax, two: with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1963 and 1965, when he also won the Cy Young Award.
• Bob Gibson, two: with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964 and 1967, both seven-game Series.
• Reggie Jackson, two: with the Oakland Athletics in 1973 and the New York Yankees in 1977, when he hit five home runs.
• Corey Seager, two: with the Dodgers in 2020 and the Texas Rangers in 2023, the only one to win it in both leagues.

No one has won three, and the other 66 winners have one each.

World Series MVP winners list by year

Every winner, checked against MLB.com's list, with the Series results from our list of World Series winners:

World Series MVPs by position: pitchers vs. position players

Pitchers have won 30 of the 74 awards, three times as many as any other position. Third basemen and outfielders have 10 each, catchers and shortstops 8, first basemen 4 and designated hitters 3, and Bobby Richardson of the Yankees, in 1960, is the only second baseman. Four pitchers won in relief, without a start: Larry Sherry in 1959, Rollie Fingers in 1974, John Wetteland in 1996 and Mariano Rivera in 1999.

Pitchers won the first five awards and 12 of the 15 through 1969, but only Fingers' in the 1970s. They took 6 of 9 in the 1990s and 3 of the 17 since 2010: Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants in 2014, Stephen Strasburg of the Washington Nationals in 2019 and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers in 2025.

The co-MVPs and the only MVP from a losing team

The award has been shared twice. In 1981 three Dodgers split it after Los Angeles lost the first two games to the Yankees and won the next four: Pedro Guerrero drove in seven runs, Ron Cey hit .350 and Steve Yeager hit two home runs. In 2001 Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling shared it after the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Yankees in seven games: Johnson went 3-0, and Schilling started three times and struck out 26.

Richardson is the only MVP from the losing team. He hit .367 with 12 RBIs in 1960, the most in any Series since the award began, matched only by Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers in 2024. The Yankees outscored the Pittsburgh Pirates 55-27 and won their three games 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0, but Pittsburgh won the other four, the last 10-9 on Bill Mazeroski's walk-off home run in Game 7.

World Series MVPs by team

The Yankees have had the most MVPs, 12, all different players: one for each of their 11 titles since 1955, plus Richardson. The Dodgers have 11 from their nine titles, counting the three of 1981 and Koufax's two, the Cardinals five, and the Athletics and Boston Red Sox four each.

Twenty-five of the 30 franchises have had one. The five without are the four that have never won the World Series, the San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Colorado Rockies and Rays, and the Cleveland Guardians, whose last title came in 1948.

How often the World Series MVP was the regular-season star

Rarely. Only 9 of the 44 position players had led their team's qualified hitters in regular-season OPS, and only 10 of the 30 pitchers their team's qualified pitchers in ERA. Eighteen did not qualify with their World Series team, among them Gene Tenace of the Athletics, a .225 hitter with five home runs in 1972 who hit four in the Series.

Through 2025, 11 MVPs had also won that season's league MVP or Cy Young Award, from Bob Turley of the Yankees in 1958 to Johnson in 2001, and none since. Nine were League Championship Series MVP the same October, most recently Jeremy Peña of the Houston Astros in 2022.

In the Series they were the stars. Twenty-six of the 44 position players led both teams in total bases, two of them in a tie, and together they hit .391, against .286 for the same teams in the regular season. The 30 pitchers had a 1.48 ERA in the Series and 2.91 in the season.

Youngest and oldest World Series MVPs

Bret Saberhagen of the Kansas City Royals was the youngest, 21 years and 199 days old in 1985, and Willie Stargell of the Pirates the oldest, 39 years and 225 days, in 1979. Johnson, 38 in 2001, is the only other winner aged 38 or older. The median winner was 29; six were younger than 25 and 11 were 35 or older.

How long the Series lasted when the MVP was named

Of the 71 Series since 1955, 29 went seven games, 15 six, 16 five and 11 were sweeps. Pitchers won 18 of the 30 awards in seven-game Series, where a starter can pitch three times, and 12 of the 44 in shorter ones.

All five pitchers who won three games in a Series since 1955 were named MVP, each in a seven-game Series: Lew Burdette of the Milwaukee Braves in 1957, Gibson in 1967, Mickey Lolich of the Detroit Tigers in 1968, Johnson in 2001 and Yamamoto in 2025.

William Contreras, the 2026 World Series MVP

The Brewers won Games 1 and 2 at American Family Field, 3-2 and 5-4, and Game 3 10-1 at Tropicana Field, lost Game 4 4-3 and won Game 5 4-1 on October 28 for the franchise's first title, after 57 seasons without one. Contreras started all five games at catcher and went 8 for 21 with a double, two walks and four RBIs; the double made Game 5 3-0 in the sixth. He threw out four Rays trying to steal, in nine attempts.

By MLB.com's list he is the eighth catcher to win the award, counting Yeager in 1981, the first since Salvador Perez of the Royals in 2015 and the third born in Venezuela, after Pablo Sandoval in 2012 and Perez. In the regular season he hit .270 with 18 home runs, and his .758 OPS was the lowest of the Brewers' five qualified hitters, as Richardson's was for the 1960 Yankees. Milwaukee had swept the Dodgers in the NLCS; our 2026 MLB playoff bracket has every result.

World Series MVP: frequently asked questions

Who won the 2026 World Series MVP? William Contreras, the Milwaukee Brewers' catcher, who hit .381 as Milwaukee beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 for its first title.

Who has won the most World Series MVP awards? Four players have won it twice: Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Reggie Jackson and Corey Seager.

Has a World Series MVP ever come from the losing team? Once: Bobby Richardson of the New York Yankees in 1960, when the Pittsburgh Pirates won in seven games.

How this was built: the 74 awards, 1955 to 2026, come from MLB's Stats API, read on Nov. 2, 2026, and match MLB.com's list, whose positions we use, and Wikipedia's. Series results, every player's Series line and the MVPs' teams' regular seasons come from the API's schedules and player statistics; qualified hitters had 3.1 plate appearances per team game, qualified pitchers one inning. League MVPs, Cy Youngs and LCS MVPs come from its award lists; ages run to each Series' last game.