Josh Hamitlon Rangers

It’s time for midseason MVP honors and TheSportsNotebook begins today with the American League, where we’ll rank the Top 10, based on current performance to the All-Star break. Before we get into the rankings, let me preface by saying there are two criteria that don’t matter nearly as much to me as they do to the actual voters. I don’t particularly care if someone is on a playoff team. In an ideal world I’d like to see team success be a part of the equation, but not only is it not essential (this is, after all, an individual award. We have these little things called the playoffs & World Series as team rewards), I also define it more broadly, to include things helping a surprise team achieve a winning record or some other non-playoff benchmark no one expected them to get. And I don’t have a bias against starting pitchers. They may only go every fifth day, but the impact on the games they do play is easily enough to offset that. So here we go with TheSportsNotebook’s Top 10 in the AL MVP race…