Mike Trout was voted Most Valuable Player of the American League, it was announced today, and how about an “it’s about time!” for the Angels center fielder.

This was his second MVP award, but it could have been his fifth, given that he has led the league in one of the most important metrics, Wins Above Replacement (WAR), in all five of his Major League seasons.

(Only Babe Ruth had a longer AL streak, leading in WAR six straight seasons beginning in 1926).

Trout’s victory this year might mark a turning point in the “best statistical season” versus “best season by someone on a good team” MVP debate, which has raged since the award was created, most of century ago.

Which ought to be good for Trout, because the Angels are bad and seem unlikely to be anything else in the near term, no matter what sort of numbers he puts up.

Historically, playing for a bad team was nearly always death to MVP aspirations. But perhaps we now can hope that MVP voting, which is done by 30 members of the Base Ball Writers of America (BBWAA) will focus more on the player than his team’s place in the standings.

A decade ago, Mookie Betts, who was runner-up to Trout, would have won the MVP this year for his leading role in the Boston Red Sox run-scoring machine; they had a 93-69 record and scored more runs (878) than any team in MLB, 161 more than the 74-68 Angels.

Trout got 19 of 30 first-place votes (356 points), eight seconds and one third to Betts’s nine, 17 and four (311 points).

Betts had good numbers, but not as good as Trout’s, according to modern analytics.

The vote came against a backdrop of widespread scolding from the advanced statistics community, aimed in part at the BBWAA electors who seemed stuck in a sort of time warp when voting the MVP.

After his first two seasons (2012, 2013) Trout saw the award go to Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera, a nice hitter but a defensive liability whenever he puts on the leather and a station-to-station sort of baserunner.

Trout’s value in getting around the bases, and in stealing bases and, in particular, his status as an elite fielder in one of the most important defensive positions, seemed overlooked after the Tigers went to the playoffs and the Angels went home.

Trout won the award in 2014, the only season the Angels have advanced to the playoffs in his career, but it was back to “who was the best player for a good team?” in 2015 when Josh Donaldson won the award despite numbers the advanced-statistics crowd deemed a poor match to Trout’s performance.

That made three years out of four that Trout led the league in WAR but did not win the award recognizing him as the most productive player. We feared 2016 voting would make it four years of five.

But the voters got it right. We now dare to hope that 2016 represents a tipping point in the long debate about “value” being important only insofar as it applies to players with winning teams .

Perhaps a majority of awards-voting BBWAA writers now tip the balloting toward the stat-savvy, who are willing to make the effort to find out how players compare individually, rather than examining them through the lens of the players’ teams.

Trout, 25, so far has been one of the great players in baseball history, and it would be silly/stupid if he ended what could be a Ruthian sort of career with no more MVP awards than Miggy Cabrera.