the WAR leader should automatically win MVP. Certainly, other factors should be weighed. But he should be in the discussion.

I also don't want to take anything away from guys like Dennis Eckersley (2.9 WAR when he won in 1992) or Willie Hernandez in '84. They did their job extremely well those years and were vital to their team's success. Their WAR was limited by the number of innings they threw. But to put WAR leaders so far back in MVP voting in the examples I illustrated in the OP seems crazy now. Of course, SABRmetrics wasn't widely implemented back then so it's more understandable.