Every fall, one player rises above the rest on baseball’s biggest stage. The World Series MVP award, officially the Willie Mays Award since 2017, goes to the player who shines brightest in the Fall Classic, and the list of winners is a roll call of October legends: clutch hitters, dominant aces, and the occasional unlikely hero who seized his moment under the brightest lights.
First handed out in 1955, the award has gone to some of the game’s greatest names and to plenty of surprises too. The most recent winner is Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who in 2025 became the first pitcher to win it since 2019, capping a dominant October run. Only four players in history have ever won the award twice, the most recent being Corey Seager.
The chart below lists every World Series MVP going back to 1980, with each player’s position and team. Take a look, then we’ll get into the standout stories.
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The recent winners and a pitching revival
The 2020s have produced a varied list of October heroes. The most recent is Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers’ Japanese ace, who in 2025 turned in a dominant performance, including a clutch relief appearance to force Game 7, and became the first pitcher to win the award since 2019. His win bucked a recent trend: for much of the 2010s and early 2020s, position players dominated, with sluggers and infielders like Freddie Freeman (2024), Jeremy Pena (2022), and George Springer (2017) taking the honor.
Yamamoto joined a long tradition of pitchers carrying their teams in October. In fact, pitcher is the most common position for a World Series MVP, having won the award 30 times. From dominant starters like Madison Bumgarner, whose legendary 2014 run is considered one of the greatest in postseason history, to closers like Mariano Rivera in 1999, arms have always found a way to shine on the biggest stage.
The exclusive two-time club
In the entire history of the award, only four players have ever won it twice, a testament to how hard it is to dominate the World Series even once. The list is elite: Sandy Koufax (1963, 1965) and Bob Gibson (1964, 1967) were dominant aces of the 1960s, while Reggie Jackson earned his “Mr. October” nickname winning in 1973 and 1977. The only modern addition is Corey Seager, who won with the Dodgers in 2020 and the Rangers in 2023.
Seager’s achievement is especially notable because he and Reggie Jackson are the only two players to win the award with two different franchises. Winning a single World Series MVP puts a player among October royalty; winning two, for different teams no less, is a feat that places Seager in a class with three Hall of Fame legends.
The unlikely heroes
One of the best things about the World Series MVP is how often it goes to an unexpected name. The award does not care about regular-season reputation; it rewards whoever gets hot at exactly the right time. Role players and journeymen like David Eckstein (2006), Ray Knight (1986), and Steve Pearce (2018) have all claimed the honor with the performances of their lives, etching their names alongside the legends forever.
The most famous example of October magic came in 2011, when Cardinals third baseman David Freese, a St. Louis native, delivered one of the greatest clutch performances ever, including a game-tying triple and a walk-off home run in a legendary Game 6. These Cinderella stories are part of what makes the award special: in a single week, an ordinary player can become a permanent piece of baseball history.
Twice in history, the award has been split between multiple players in the same year. The first came in 1981, when three Los Angeles Dodgers, Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero, and Steve Yeager, shared the honor after a balanced team effort against the Yankees. The second was in 2001, when Arizona’s dominant pitching duo of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling were named co-MVPs, having combined to win all four of the Diamondbacks’ games in a thrilling seven-game series over the Yankees.
These shared awards are the exception, as the honor almost always goes to a single standout. But they highlight how a true team effort, or an unstoppable pitching tandem, can occasionally make it impossible for voters to single out just one player. They remain among the most interesting quirks in the award’s history.
Final Word
The World Series MVP award is a time capsule of baseball’s biggest moments, from Mike Schmidt in 1980 to Yoshinobu Yamamoto in 2025. It rewards the player who rises highest when the stakes are greatest, whether a Hall of Fame ace, a superstar slugger, or an unlikely hero having the week of his life. Pitchers have claimed it most often, the Yankees have produced the most winners, and only four players have ever managed to win it twice.
Every October, a new name gets the chance to join this storied list and become a permanent part of World Series lore. For more on baseball’s biggest stages, see our list of MLB All-Star Game winners by year.