Handing out the mid-season awards.....NLB

[DCPatriot]

National League MVP of the half year



Bryce Harper, Washington Nationals


With all due appreciation for the awesome and ridiculously underrated Paul Goldschmidt, this was the easiest choice on the whole board. The Nationals without Bryce Harper this year are the Machine without Florence, the E Street Band without Springsteen. No one else in this lineup has an .800 OPS, a slugging percentage more than .435 or even 10 home runs.

Anthony Rendon, Jayson Werth and Ryan Zimmerman haven't spent one day together on the field all season -- including spring training.

And meanwhile, the friendly neighborhood 22-year-old right fielder is on pace to crank out 48 home runs, 122 walks, 89 extra-base hits and a slash line of .343/.471/.709. That would merely go down as the greatest season by a player this young in baseball history. Even if we lower some of those bars, just one player in history has ever hit .330 or better, with 40 homers or more, in his age-22 season. That would be Joseph P. DiMaggio Jr. So you know That Year we've been waiting "forever" for Bryce Harper to have? Uh, this is it.

Apologies to: Goldschmidt, Buster Posey, Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, Andrew McCutchen, Nolan Arenado, Todd Frazier, Max Scherzer, Zack Greinke

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/13226198/first-half-award-winners-major-league-baseball



American League MVP of the half year

Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels



We knew this would happen one of these seasons, right? Harper and Trout, hogging all the MVP hardware, just the way we envisioned it back when they were called up on the same day in 2012. Except that Harper is only 22. And Trout is still just 23. And we've never had a season -- ever -- in which both leagues' MVPs were as young as these two guys. But we're headed in that direction, all right. Hard as I tried to persuade myself to anoint my preseason MVP pick, Josh Donaldson -- or Miguel Cabrera or Jason Kipnis -- it all comes back to the same undebatable principle: Who's better than Mike Trout? And the answer is still nobody. Donaldson is an energizing force who has changed the face of the Toronto Blue Jays and fills up our defensive highlight reels nightly. He has also hit more home runs than Trout (in a power hitter's palace). But Trout beats him by significant margins in slugging, on-base percentage, OPS, hitting with men in scoring position, production in high-leverage situations, etc. And on the other side of the ball, he plays the heck out of a premium position. So as one friend of mine put it, this is the annual LeBron argument. If you're bored with giving the best player in the sport the MVP every year, then you talk yourself into someone else. Well, sorry. Couldn't do that. Not this year.

Apologies to: Donaldson, Cabrera, Kipnis, Manny Machado, Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder, Dallas Keuchel, Lorenzo Cain, Brian Dozier