Most MLB MVP Awards Won

Barry Bonds holds the record for the most MLB Most Valuable Player awards, with seven, won between 1990 and 2004. His total is more than double that of any other player in baseball history, since no one else has won the award more than three times.

The MVP is baseball’s premier individual honor, awarded in each league every season by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Winning it is the mark of a superstar season; winning it repeatedly is exceptionally rare. Here is the full leaderboard of MLB’s most decorated MVP winners, the careers behind the numbers, and why Bonds’s record is so commanding. All figures are as of the 2025 season.

The record holder: Barry Bonds and seven MVPs

Bonds won his first three MVPs in the early 1990s, split between the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants, establishing himself as the game’s best all-around player. Then, from 2001 to 2004, he produced one of the most dominant offensive stretches ever seen, winning the award four years running.

That late-career streak is the heart of the record. No other player has won the MVP more than three times in an entire career, yet Bonds did it four times consecutively, pushing his total to seven and putting the mark in a category of its own.

The full leaderboard of MLB MVP winners

The table below ranks players by total MLB MVP awards. Active players are noted.

Rank	MVPs	Player	Award years
1	7	Barry Bonds	1990, 1992-93, 2001-04
2	3	Jimmie Foxx	1932, 1933, 1938
2	3	Joe DiMaggio	1939, 1941, 1947
2	3	Stan Musial	1943, 1946, 1948
2	3	Yogi Berra	1951, 1954, 1955
2	3	Mickey Mantle	1956, 1957, 1962
2	3	Mike Schmidt	1980, 1981, 1986
2	3	Alex Rodriguez	2003, 2005, 2007
2	3	Albert Pujols	2005, 2008, 2009
2	3	Mike Trout*	2014, 2016, 2019

*Mike Trout is active; his total is current through the 2025 season and could still climb. Roy Campanella also won three MVP awards.

The three-time group is one of the deepest clusters in sports, spanning from 1930s slugger Jimmie Foxx through Yankees icons Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle to modern stars Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols and Mike Trout. Yet all of them sit four awards behind Bonds.

The three-time winners and the modern chase

The list of three-time MVPs reads like a baseball hall of fame, and it underscores just how far ahead Bonds stands. Among active players, Mike Trout is the only one in the group, with three awards from his prime years with the Angels. For him to threaten the record would require a remarkable late-career surge, a reminder of how singular Bonds’s seven remains. Many of these same names dominate our leaderboards for the most home runs all-time and the most hits in MLB history.

Hitters, pitchers and the award’s shape

The MVP almost always goes to an everyday hitter, because position players contribute across far more games than starting pitchers. That is why elite arms are instead celebrated through their own honor, tracked on our leaderboard of the most Cy Young Awards. The occasional pitcher does break through in a historic season, but the MVP leaderboard is overwhelmingly a hitters’ list.

Why the record matters

The MVP rewards the player who most shapes a season, blending power, average, defense and impact on winning. Bonds’s seven awards, and especially his four in a row, represent a peak that no one in baseball history has approached. The depth of the three-time group only sharpens the point: the sport’s greatest names top out at three, while Bonds stands alone at seven.

The short version: Barry Bonds holds the MLB MVP record with seven awards, more than double the three shared by a deep group of legends including Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Albert Pujols and Mike Trout. As of the 2025 season, no active player is close, leaving Bonds’s record firmly intact.