Neither one of this year's Most Valuable Player races are easy to call, but that's true for two very different reasons. In the American League, it's long been clear that Jose Altuve and Aaron Judge were the front-runners, each with their own strong cases. In the National League, the issue has been that there really hasn't been a front-runner in a tightly packed race, as there's probably seven or eight players you could make a credible argument for.
Since the top three finalists have already been announced, the field has been narrowed a bit, but it's still not clear who is going to win either race. With two competitions as tight as this, we know that voters (who had to cast their ballots at the end of the regular season) had to go a little deeper than traditional batting average and RBIs to make a choice. Since many surely went into Statcast™ data, let's do the same. Here's how these two important races shake out, in advance of the announcement coming on Thursday at 6 p.m. ET on MLB Network.
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NATIONAL LEAGUE
With all due respect to Charlie Blackmon, Nolan Arenado, Kristopher Bryant, Anthony Rendon, and others, the trio of Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt, and Giancarlo Stanton make for a pretty strong grouping. But how to choose? We seem to finally be moving past the "only players from postseason teams need apply" phase, so Goldschmidt gets no extra credit here for having a stronger pitching staff than Votto or Stanton did.
Yet you could still make a case for any of them, depending on how you go about it. Our latest-and-greatest Statcast™ hitting metric is Expected Weighted On-Base Average, or xwOBA, which attempts to remove the effects of defense and ballpark by simply looking at the quality of contact of each batted ball (by exit velocity and launch angle), and identifying the usual outcome of that combination across baseball, as well as including real-world strikeout and walk totals. 

Based on that, the first point clearly goes to Votto (.320/.454/.578) and his .424 xwOBA, since he not only topped both Stanton (.398) and Goldschmidt (.397), he finished second in all of baseball (and first in the NL) among the 428 hitters with 100 plate appearances. Votto led qualified hitters in walk rate (19 percent) while also finishing ninth in slugging percentage (.578). It's a strong combination.
While he didn't hit harder than his competitors (his 87 mph average exit velocity was only slightly above the Major League average of 86.6), he did hit at better angles. The 58.5 percent of his batted balls that were fly balls or liners were 10th in the Majors of 272 hitters with 100 balls in play, and better than either Stanton (44.6 percent, 211th) or Goldschmidt (50.4 percent, 106th).
Unsurprisingly, a great deal of Votto's success was due to outstanding decision-making. He was behind in the count on only 21.6 percent of the pitches he saw this year, and that's the lowest mark of the 314 hitters who saw at least 1,000 pitches in 2017. Even the great Votto isn't immune to the effects of the count; he hit .365 with a .683 slugging when he was ahead, and .268 with a .348 slugging when he was behind. Not getting behind is an obvious strategy.
Of course, Stanton (.281/.376/.631) appears on all sorts of leaderboards himself, beyond just the 59 home runs. He had the hardest-hit ball of the year, at 122.2 mph, three of the top seven, and eight of the top 19. He led the National League in Barrels, with 76, and 10 of his homers were projected at 450 feet, the most in baseball. 
While most of the attention Stanton gets is for his bat, he's also a better defender than you might think, as he finished as a Gold Glove finalist, and showcased his strong arm with a 96.5 mph on-target throw to nail Philadelphia's Nick Williams in September.

Goldschmidt (.297/.404/.563), for his part, had yet another strong year, though this one was a little different than the ones we've seen in the past, as he began to turn more on inside pitches and pull his hardest-hit balls to left rather than use the whole field. As detailed by MLB.com's David Adler, Goldschmidt's .434 xwOBA against pitches on the inner third or inside edge of the plate was the third-best in baseball.

Goldschmidt's 47 percent hard-hit rate was also better than either Stanton (45.5 percent) or Votto (32.8 percent), as well as being one of the top 10 overall, and his 18 stolen bases gave him double digits for the fifth time in six years.
AMERICAN LEAGUE

We don't know who is going to win between Judge (.284/.422/.627) or Altuve (.346/.410/.547), but we do know how many different ways Judge's first full season changed Statcast™ forever.
Judge's .446 xwOBA was the best of any hitter. His average exit velocity of 94.6 mph was first, too. So was his 55 percent hard-hit rate, and his 87 Barrels set a new single-season Statcast™ mark. He had four of the five-hardest hit balls of the year, and 10 of the top 25, and two of the five longest dingers of the year, topping out with the longest of the 2017 season on June 11, a 495-ft monster.
While voters don't really consider "Home Run Derby feats" in their evaluations, it's hard to tell his story without remembering that when he won the Derby, it was with 47 total homers, 16 of which had an exit velocity of 115 mph or more, and that four of his homers went 500 feet, including a 513-foot blast that seems like it may stand for years as the Derby's longest.

In addition to the hitting exploits, he was one of only 13 outfielders with a throw tracked at 99 mph or harder this year, and he had a solid +6 Outs Above Average, making him one of the top 20 defensive outfielders in 2017.
Interestingly enough, while Altuve has a strong chance to win the award while it feels like Jose Ramirez (.318/.374/.583) does not, their seasons were more similar than you'd think. In xwOBA, Ramirez (.355) and Altuve (.349) were both excellent; in the similar xBA, which considers just hits, not the extra-base value of them, Ramirez's .292 outpaced both Judge (.278) and (.274).
While obviously neither infielder could come close to Judge's 55 percent hard-hit rate, Ramirez's 34.8 percent allowed him to top Altuve's 28 percent. Even their Sprint Speed -- measured in feet per second in a runner's fastest one-second window, with 27 ft/sec being average -- was nearly a tie. Ramirez's mark was 28.1 ft/sec, while Altuve's was 28 ft/sec, both being solidly above-average.
But while Altuve's overall speed was more "good" than "great," he showed the ability to turn it on in key moments. In late September, he had the fastest home-to-first time Statcast™ has measured in its three seasons, a blazing 3.33 seconds. That's part of where he really stood out this year; his 30 non-bunt infield hits were the most of anyone.

In Game 2 of the ALCS, his mad dash home had him running at 29.5 ft/sec, well above his average, and in just 10.27 seconds, his fastest first-to-home time tracked in the three years of Statcast™.
For the most part, Altuve's metrics didn't have a big step up from last year, because he was pretty great in 2016, too, finishing third in the MVP balloting. He'll be second at worst this year, and he may even take home the top prize for the first time.