CONSPIRACY ALERT!!! According to an article written on 7/19/22 by MLB.com reporter Anthony Castrovince (courtesy of Wayback Machine), in the event of an ASG swing-off, the MVP award is still supposed to be "based on what happened in the nine-inning game"...
Fresh off the excitement of a first-ever swing-off, it appears MLB chose to abandon its own rule and award MVP to the game's sudden hero, Schwarber, despite the fact that he failed to record a hit in regulation. With this, Kyle became the only non-pitcher to win ASG MVP without a hit.
This oversight about the award is not particularly disturbing to me. Gimmick or not, the swing-off is a deciding factor for this event and Schwarbs clearly saved the day for the N.L. However, what is a little disturbing is the fact that MLB.com appears to have edited the original article to cover up what the league did (see article posted 7/16/25, 12:44AM EDT) while adding a note that "this article has been updated since it was originally published in 2022".
https://www.mlb.com/news/all-star-game-tiebreaker-home-run-derby
Maybe MLB changed the MVP rule sometime in the past three years and it was simply not noted anywhere public. But the situation looks so suspicious to the point that I highly doubt it. To be clear, I have am not providing an exclusive observation here. I see across the internet that others have noticed it too.
My other observation is the curiosity of awarding a glass bat to the MVP winner when pitchers are eligible to win (and have won it a fair amount of times, as recently as Shane Bieber in 2019). They would never use that piece of equipment in a game. I realize the award is named after legendary hitter Ted Williams, but a more generic type of trophy would be more fitting.