World Series MVPs: Where Are They Now?

Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

They may have been heroes on baseball’s biggest stage, but what have they done since being named World Series Most Valuable Players?

Winning a World Series is the goal of almost every major league player. The World Series has helped define a few players’ careers such as Reggie Jackson and David Ortiz. Some of the best players have never even won a World Series, like Ken Griffey Jr. While a championship has evaded some of the greats, many players that will never make the Hall of Fame or even make an All-Star team have shone in the bright lights of October baseball.

The World Series Most Valuable Player Award isn’t just an award won by future Hall of Famers. There is a wide array of players who have won the award, from journeymen to all-time greats. For every Johnny Bench that wins the award, there is a Scott Brosius who will be remembered for their moments as a postseason hero. Players who have been throw-ins in trades, late-round draft picks, comeback players, utility roles and undersized guys have all been represented as the best player in the Fall Classic.

Since 2000, there has yet to be a World Series champion to repeat in back-to-back years and 11 different franchises have hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy. There has yet to be a player that has won multiple World Series Most Valuable Player Awards in that span.

Out of those 17 different winners, there has been one Hall of Famer, 17 All-Stars, at least three future Hall of Famers (more if some active players keep the same pace) and many players who will never be known as “great.” Each winner has a different story. Here is what they have been doing since their big achievements in October.

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2016: Ben Zobrist, Outfielder, Chicago Cubs

Ben Zobrist is the reigning World Series Most Valuable Player, so there is not much to talk about when it comes to what he has done since winning the World Series with the Chicago Cubs last October. Like Manny Ramirez, Zobrist will be remembered as the World Series MVP of a team that broke a curse. That’s not a bad way to be remembered.

Zobrist didn’t just help snap the Cubs’ long drought, but also helped the Royals win for the first time in 30 years. Those championships came in back-to-back years. After winning with the Royals, Zobrist signed a four-year, $56 million deal to head over to Chicago after a championship season. That’s a bold move, but it paid off.

Before becoming a World Series Most Valuable Player, Zobrist was an All-Star for Joe Maddon‘s Tampa Bay Rays. He helped take a Rays team that had never even been to the playoffs get to the World Series. They ended up losing to the Philadelphia Phillies. Since then, Zobrist has been a big part of some good teams and that should carry on the next few years with the Cubs. He has a shot at being the first player in MLB history to win the award in back-to-back years.

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2015: Salvador Perez, Catcher, Kansas City Royals

Before Salvador Perez won the World Series Most Valuable Player Award, he was an up-and-coming catcher who had been named to three consecutive All-Star teams and a young star on the league’s hottest team. His career had been well on its way before being rewarded for his hard work for the 2015 world champions.

Since that day in 2015, Perez has not stopped producing at a high level. He has stayed atop the baseball world at the catching position by being both an offensive threat at the plate and a defensive asset behind it. He hit 22 home runs in 2016 to go along with 64 runs batted in. To further prove he is a complete player, he added his fourth Gold Glove Award and first Silver Slugger to his resume. He was also selected to his fourth All-Star team.

Perez is a franchise player the Kansas City Royals can build around. He is a complete player, and he is only 26 years old. That’s scary. He has shown much enthusiasm playing the game and for his team. After winning the World Series, he got a Royals World Series champions tattoo on his bicep. With the Royals missing the playoffs in 2016, hopefully Perez can help lead them back to contention in 2017.

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2014: Madison Bumgarner, Pitcher, San Francisco Giants

Madison Bumgarner has been a one of the best pitchers in baseball since leading the San Francisco Giants to their third World Series championship in five years. The Giants ace has compiled a 33-18 record and maintained a sub-3.00 earned run average. He has been named to the All-Star team both years after being named World Series Most Valuable Player, and has been a rock at the top of the Giants’ rotation.

Bumgarner has pitched over 200 innings in both seasons since he was the World Series Most Valuable Player, which gives him a streak of six straight seasons achieving that feat. He has pitched four complete games each year since 2014, which is an ode to his durability. With his workload including long playoff runs, it is hard to find someone willing to pitch the amount Mad-Bum is.

Bumgarner’s dominance is not just reserved for the regular season. His postseason numbers have been amazing throughout his career. His career record is 8-3 and he carries a 2.11 postseason earned run average in 16 games (14 starts). On top of that, he has three complete games in the postseason and had won a championship each time he had been to the postseason, until 2016 when the Giants lost to the eventual world champion Cubs in the National League Division Series.

Bumgarner is a postseason pitcher who excels in the spotlight. There will be plenty more to come from him.

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2013: David Ortiz, Designated Hitter, Boston Red Sox

In 2013, the worst-to-first Boston Red Sox won the World Series on the back of arguably the greatest postseason performer of all time, David Ortiz. Ortiz had shown postseason heroics in the past, but finally won the World Series Most Valuable Player Award nine years after his first title. It was his third overall, all with Boston.

After 2013, Ortiz recorded 35 or more home runs and 100 or more runs batted in each season. He also made one more All-Star team, finished sixth in regular season Most Valuable Player voting and won a Silver Slugger. To add to his legend, he recorded arguably the best final season of any player in history. In his final year, he tallied a .315 average, 38 home runs, 126 runs batted in and 5.1 wins above replacement.

Now, “Big Papi” is retired from the game of baseball, although rumors are constantly swirling about a possible return. From his “cryptic” tweets to the speculation about whether he will play in the World Baseball Classic this spring, Ortiz is still a hot-button topic. For now, he will keep using TurboTax to get a write-off for all the tennis balls he’s cranking out at the country club.

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2012: Pablo Sandoval, Third Baseman, San Francisco Giants

The San Francisco Giants won their second World Series in three years in 2012. The big performer that year was Pablo Sandoval. In the World Series, he batted .500 with three home runs and four runs batted in. Those numbers propelled him to Most Valuable Player status in the Fall Classic that season. At the time, he was considered one of the top third basemen in the game.

Since that season, Pablo and company brought home another title to San Francisco. After the last World Series victory, Sandoval bolted for Boston and signed a five-year, $90 million deal with the Red Sox. Since then, Sandoval has struggled to stay injury-free and keep his weight under control.

Since going to Boston, “Kung Fu Panda” has batted .245, hit 10 home runs and drove in 47 runs in two seasons. To cut him a little slack, he only played three games in 2016 due to shoulder surgery that sidelined him for the remainder of the season in April. The only other footnote for Sandoval was an incident where his belt broke while swinging at a pitch. Recently, though, Sandoval has been all over social media looking slimmer than ever. He may be a rebound candidate for 2017.

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2011: David Freese, Third Baseman, St. Louis Cardinals

David Freese had one of the biggest hits in World Series history in 2011 when he brought back the Cardinals from the dead against the Texas Rangers by tying the game with a two-run triple. The Rangers were one strike away from becoming World Series champions. That wasn’t all, though. He hit a walk-off home run in the 11th inning to send it to Game 7. The Cardinals won, giving them their second title in six years.

Since that time, Freese made an All-Star team in 2012, but has struggled to regain his productivity from that All-Star season. He hasn’t hit more than 14 home runs in a season since 2012 and hasn’t batted higher than .270 over the course of a full season. From 2013 to 2016 he has posted only five wins above replacement. He had 3.8 in 2012 alone.

Freese was traded to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim before the start of the 2014 season, never hitting over .260 for them. He signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 2016 season, for whom he batted .270 with 13 home runs and 55 runs batted in. He was rewarded with a two-year contract extension this offseason for his efforts.

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2010: Edgar Renteria, Shortstop, San Francisco Giants

The Giants’ first World Series Most Valuable Player on their every-other-year run wasn’t a player you would expect. It wasn’t Buster Posey or Madison Bumgarner. It was Edgar Renteria. The man who was the clutch performer in the 1997 World Series 13 years earlier was the man who helped the Giants get their first title in the Bay Area.

Renteria’s stats that season were not impressive at all. In 76 games, he batted .276 with three home runs and 22 runs batted in. He almost hit the same amount of home runs in the World Series, two, as he did all season.

Since that year, Renteria played one last season, batting .251 with five home runs and 36 runs batted in for the Cincinnati Reds. In January 2017, Renteria was on the ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame. He only received 0.5 percent of the vote (two total votes) and is no longer eligible for future ballot consideration.

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2009: Hideki Matsui, Outfielder, New York Yankees

The Yankees won their first title since 2000 in 2009, after losing their previous two appearances in 2001 and 2003. Their Most Valuable Player during the World Series was Japanese outfielder Hideki Matsui, an All-Star and superstar in his homeland. He hit an incredible .615 with three home runs and eight runs batted in in a Fall Classic victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. Those would be his last games as a Yankee.

After that, Matsui played three more seasons for three more teams (Angels, Athletics and Rays). He did well for the Angels, with 21 home runs, 84 runs batted in and a .274 average. That was his last productive season. His last season was spent in Tampa Bay where he played in only 34 games, hit .147 and hit two final bombs.

Today, Matsui lives in a West Side apartment in New York and has a house in Connecticut. He lives with his wife and four-year-old son and works as a roving hitting instructor for the New York Yankees system. He chose to stay in the United States because he wanted a quieter life, which would be impossible with his celebrity status in Japan.

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2008: Cole Hamels, Pitcher, Philadelphia Phillies

The 2008 Philadelphia Phillies were a star-studded squad that included the likes of Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Shane Victorino. None of them were as valuable as Cole Hamels during their World Series win over the Tampa Bay Rays. He went 1-0 with a 2.77 earned run average in his two starts.

Since that time, Hamels has tallied 38.9 wins above replacement, a 98-73 record and gone to three All-Star Games. He has also made five more postseason appearances from 2009-2016. In 2015, he was traded to the Texas Rangers to help their playoff push. He went 7-1 with a 3.66 earned run average after the trade, but the Rangers would later get bounced by the Toronto Blue Jays.

Today, Cole Hamels is still a top-of-the-rotation arm for the Texas Rangers. In 2016, he went 15-5 with a 3.32 earned run average. He was named to the American League All-Star team and he helped lead the Rangers to a second straight playoff berth. He made one start during the ALDS this past season and was lit up for seven earned runs in 3.1 innings pitched. The Rangers would end up losing for the second season in a row to Toronto. He is expected to be the Rangers’ ace heading into 2017.

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2007: Mike Lowell, Third Baseman, Boston Red Sox

Mike Lowell was not the kind of guy you would expect to be the World Series Most Valuable Player in 2007. He was acquired by the Red Sox in a trade with the Marlins in which Boston traded prized prospect Hanley Ramirez for himself, Josh Beckett and Guillermo Mota. Lowell was actually a throw-in to the deal. That throw-in paid off down the road for a Red Sox team looking to bring back its 2004 magic.

Lowell, in his second year with the Red Sox, tore it up during the season. He batted .324 with 21 home runs and 120 runs batted in, earning his last career All-Star berth. He batted .400 in the World Series with one home run and four runs batted in. The Red Sox would sweep the red-hot Colorado Rockies in four games.

After his heroic 2007 postseason, he signed a contract keeping him in Boston until the end of his career. Lowell would play three more seasons before retiring in 2010. He was on the 2016 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot, but didn’t receive a single vote. He now spends his days on MLB Network working as an analyst on MLB Tonight.

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2006: David Eckstein, Shortstop, St. Louis Cardinals

A shortstop that stands five feet, six inches tall and weighs 170 pounds doesn’t seem like the most likely candidate to win a World Series Most Valuable Player Award. Adding that he only had 27 home runs in six career seasons would make it even more of a long shot. Did I mention he played for a team that went 83-79 and barely squeaked into the playoffs? David Eckstein is the unlikely player that defied the odds.

Already a World Series champion with the 2002 Angels, Eckstein led his team to a World Series championship over the Detroit Tigers with a .364 average and four runs batted in (just over one-sixth of his regular season total). The final game of the 2006 World Series would be the last postseason game of his career. He would end up playing four more seasons in the show. He played one more with St. Louis before bouncing around from Toronto to Arizona to San Diego. He would finish his career with 35 home runs, just eight more than in his years before being named World Series MVP.

In the 2016 Hall of Fame election, he received just two votes. Today, he runs a women’s science fiction merchandise company with his wife called Her Universe. Their apparel includes merchandise revolving around Marvel, The Walking Dead and Battlestar Galactica, to name a few.

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2005: Jermaine Dye, Outfielder, Chicago White Sox

If there is one team that gets lost in the shuffle of teams snapping long world championship droughts, it is the 2005 Chicago White Sox. The South Side team’s last championship had been won the year before the last one the Red Sox won and they didn’t win one until the year after. The Most Valuable Player during that World Series was Jermaine Dye. He put up a .438 batting average with one home run and three runs batted in during their victory over the Houston Astros.

After earning a spot in White Sox lore, Dye would play four more seasons and never hit fewer than 27 home runs in a season. He was still a productive player during his final season in 2009, but was bought out of the rest of his contract by the White Sox in the offseason. He never ended up signing elsewhere. Dye didn’t officially retire until March of 2011.

Today, Dye lives in San Diego with his wife and three children. He enjoys doing charity work and helping out in the community, participating in charity golf tournaments and other works. From the way it sounds, he is enjoying retirement and his role as a family man and father.

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2004: Manny Ramirez, Outfielder, Boston Red Sox

We all know the story. The Red Sox came back from the biggest series deficit in baseball history to beat the rival New York Yankees and go to the 2004 World Series. They would go on to beat the Cardinals in four games to reverse the Curse of the Bambino. The World Series Most Valuable Player that year: Manny Ramirez. Ramirez batted .412 with one home run and four runs batted in to help the Sox break the 86-year curse.

Since then, Ramirez as had quite a slide. At one point, he was considered a surefire Hall of Famer. That was before he was suspended in both 2009 and 2011 for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. He retired after the second positive test instead of facing a 100-game suspension. Since then, he has attempted comebacks with the Athletics, Rangers and Cubs. He even served as a player-coach for the Iowa Cubs in 2014. He also played a stint of professional baseball in Taiwan.

Ramirez is currently getting ready to play in 2017. He will be playing for a Japanese independent league team called the Kochi Fighting Dogs. He agreed to a deal with the Fighting Dogs in January of 2017.

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

2003: Josh Beckett, Pitcher, Florida Marlins

The 2003 Florida Marlins surprised the baseball world by beating the powerhouse New York Yankees in the World Series. The World Series Most Valuable Player Award went to a 23-year-old gamer named Josh Beckett. He posted an incredible 1.10 earned run average with 19 strikeouts in 16.1 innings pitched in his two World Series starts that year. The big-time Yankees were no match for the young stud from Texas.

Beckett would later bring home postseason hardware again in 2007 with the Red Sox as the ALCS Most Valuable Player. His 2003 Marlins teammate Mike Lowell would win the World Series MVP that year. The 2007 Red Sox would give Beckett his last World Series ring. He would later be traded to the Dodgers in 2012 and would never pitch again in the postseason after 2009.

Beckett’s career would end after his 2014 season ended prematurely due to a hip injury. After being told he was done for the season, he decided to call it a career. Today, he lives on a ranch with his wife, Holly, and two daughters, Sage and Ryann. In 2016, Beckett was the caddie for PGA golfer Brett Wetterich at the Valero Texas Open.

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2002: Troy Glaus, Third Baseman, Anaheim Angels

Troy Glaus was a premier third baseman in the early 2000s, and the 2002 World Series Most Valuable Player award solidified that claim. Glaus, who hit over 40 home runs in two of his first three full seasons, showed off his power in the 2002 Fall Classic. He hit three home runs, drove in eight runs and hit .385. The young player at the hot corner was able to outperform All-Star teammates John Lackey, Darin Erstad and Garret Anderson to show his worth on the biggest stage.

After that postseason, Glaus would make two more All-Star teams and stay productive with Arizona, Toronto, St. Louis and Atlanta before retiring after the 2010 season. Although he was injury-plagued for a few seasons, he was still a source of power in the middle of a major league lineup. Unfortunately, he was named in the Mitchell Report in 2007, which may put a cloud over his above-average career.

After his retirement, Glaus worked on improving his golf game at his local golf course. It is said he can crush the ball off the tee, which is no surprise with his size and resume as a power hitter during his baseball career. He currently calls Ocala, Florida, home and lives there with his wife, Ann and son, Ty. He was also on the 2016 Hall of Fame ballot but did not receive any votes.

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2001: Randy Johnson, Pitcher, Arizona Diamondbacks

The 2001 World Series was a classic. The Arizona Diamondbacks beat the New York Yankees on a bloop single by Luis Gonzalez off of Mariano Rivera. The World Series Most Valuable Player Award, however, was given to two pitchers. One of them was Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. “The Big Unit” put up big numbers against the Evil Empire, going 3-0 with a 1.04 earned run average while putting up 19 strikeouts in 17.1 innings pitched.

During his illustrious career, Johnson won 303 games and struck out 4,875 batters. After his World Series MVP performance, Johnson would pitch a perfect game in 2004 and make one more All-Star team. He played for the New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants and one other stint with the Diamondbacks. He recorded his 300th win in 2009 as a member of the Giants at the age of 45. After the season, he announced his retirement.

Since his retirement, Johnson was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2015, receiving 97.5 percent of the vote on the first ballot. His plaque shows him donning a Diamondbacks cap, making him the first to do so. Today, he is the assistant general manager of the Diamondbacks and enjoys a second career in photography.

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Also 2001: Curt Schilling, Pitcher, Arizona Diamondbacks

The other World Series Most Valuable Player that year was pitcher Curt Schilling. Alongside Randy Johnson, Schilling fired 26 strikeouts in 21.2 innings of work. He posted a skeletal 1.69 earned run average to go along with it. It would be the first of three rings Schilling won in his career.

After his first championship, Schilling would go on to play for the Boston Red Sox and play for the 2004 curse-breaking squad. He is known for his “bloody sock” game in the 2004 ALCS against the rival Yankees. He would win a championship with Boston again in 2007 and would retire after the season. In four career trips to the postseason, Schilling started 19 games, racked up an impressive 11-2 record with 120 strikeouts and a 2.23 earned run average in 133.1 innings of work.

Since retirement, Schilling has been on a roller coaster ride. He started a gaming company called 38 Studios, which ended up going bankrupt and losing millions of dollars. In February 2014, he was diagnosed with throat cancer from his years of using smokeless tobacco. In August of the same year, he announced he was in remission.

He has also worked for ESPN as an analyst for Baseball Tonight. During his time there, he was suspended for posting a meme comparing Muslims to Nazis. He was later let go by ESPN for posting an anti-transgender meme. He currently hosts a radio show called “Whatever It Takes with Curt Schilling.”

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2000: Derek Jeter, Shortstop, New York Yankees

The Yankees won their third straight championship in the year 2000, beating the crosstown rival New York Mets. The World Series Most Valuable Player that season was star shortstop Derek Jeter. It was the fourth championship of his young career. He hit .409 and hit two home runs against the Mets that year.

Jeter’s career from there on out was solidified as one of the greatest at the shortstop position. He sprayed 3,465 career hits with a .310 career batting average. He dazzled in the field with five Gold Glove Awards and was recognized for his excellent play with 14 All-Star Game appearances. Jeter would win one more championship in 2009. “The Captain” played his whole career with the New York Yankees and is sure to be a Hall of Famer in a few years.