9 Thoughts On The National League Landscape
The National League has baseball’s best division race and two red-hot races for individual awards. Here’s nine thoughts on the NL landscape with 6 ½ weeks to go in the regular season…
The National League has baseball’s best division race and two red-hot races for individual awards. Here’s nine thoughts on the NL landscape with 6 ½ weeks to go in the regular season…
We’re wrapping up the baseball regular season here at TheSportsNotebook, and in this post we’ll focus on the National League MVP vote and other major individual awards. After picking a National League All-Star team yesterday, we’ll now narrow it down to the four players I think need to be in the MVP conversation—Buster Posey for San Francisco, Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun, Pittsburgh’s Andrew McCutchen and the dark horse contender would be Chase Headley in San Diego.
Andrew McCutchen has been seen as the runaway leader for the National League MVP, although the Pirates’ struggle to hold on the playoff race make take its toll in the final voting for their centerfielder. What McCutchen does have going for him is that there aren’t clear-cut candidates from other contenders. With that as the landscape, let’s size up the race for National League MVP as the regular season has exactly four weeks left.
TheSportsNotebook’s midseason MVP voting continues today, with a look at the National League. As I explained in yesterday’s preface to the American League Top 10, there are two areas that conventional voters weight much more heavily than I do. I could care less if someone is on a contender, though I will at least give consideration to whether they helped their team achieve a significant goal (which could be a winning season for a long-suffering franchise as much as it could a playoff berth for a consistent one). And I have no bias against pitchers, given how big their impact is on the games they start. With that said, here’s how the Top 10 in the National League MVP race breaks down at TheSportsNotebook…