Here's How Bryce Harper Could And Possibly Should Win NL MVP With Only 46 RBI's While Batting Under .300
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I'm not a smart man, but I know what love baseball is. And I know that Bryce Harper is having a MVP year. Sure, his RBI's are minimal, he's dipped below .300 (barley though at .298), and his defense has been nothing to write home about. But he's got a legit shot at MVP in my book for 3 reasons. Why?
1) Vegas. Always trust the Vegas. There's a reason why Bryce Harper is currently 2nd in odds to win NL MVP at +275 only behind a Fernando Tatis Jr. whose remainder of the season is up in the air. Call me a moron all you'd like for saying Bryce has a better than solid chance at taking home the award. But would you call Vegas an idiot? Exactly.
2) Eye Test. As someone who tries to watch every inning, the dude pimps and has been putting this team on his back and/or sac more often than not. Especially over the last month. #SAID
3) Baseball geeks LOVE Bryce and what he's doing. And who know who are the biggest baseball geeks? Writers. You know who votes for MVP? The writers. They love him and so do the ultra stat hustlers. Just take Ryan Spader for example - follow him here @TheAceOfSpaeder. He's forgotten more about baseball than you've ever know. Here's Ryan's take on Bryce being a potential MVP:
"Bryce Harper has just 46 RBI on the season, and of those 46, 21 one of them were as a result of him knocking himself in with a home run. But the back of the triple crown categories are not the end all, be all. Harper's importance to this team transcend the back of the baseball card numbers. Currently, the Phillies have a 3.3 percent chance of winning the World Series, while Bryce Harper has contributed over half of that, with a championship win probability added (a new stat by baseball-reference's Dan Hirsh) of 1.7 percent, ranking sixth best in the league. His situational WPA, which measures WPA against the leverage of a situation, think "clutch hitter," is 3.8 wins added, which is second only to the injured Tatis. His offensive winning percentage, think a team full of Bryce Harper's, is .778, which only increased yesterday, ranks third, only to, again, Tatis and the also injured Acuna. Adjusted batting wins are at 3.3, third again, to Soto and again Tatis. In fact, Harper ranks in the top-10 for virtually every advanced number, sabermetric, and analytical statistic that there is… and I get it, you don't care about these "fake" numbers, but guess what? You don't have a vote -- only the writers do, and they definitely care about these numbers, not because they show how valuable Harper is, but because they like to be at the forefront of modern thinking… or at least pretend that they are. And look, if you don't care about stats that look like algebraic equations, fine -- so often we have seen the MVP Award come down to a simple question, and that is, "what have you done for me lately?" Well Harper has batted .327/.446/.693 over his last 44 games, and if it continues through the end of the season, he will be the National League MVP."
#SAID
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