Kris Bryant is everything you could want in an MVP candidate. He hits, he runs, he plays defense, he moves around, he’s in there every day — Bryant is an outstanding player on an outstanding team. You don’t have to worry about the Cubs wasting him, and not going to the playoffs. If Bryant’s teammates are doing him any harm, it could be because there are too many good ones — even without Bryant, the Cubs would be fine. It speaks to the roster’s strength, but Bryant is the best regular. He’s maybe, or probably, the best all-around player in the National League.

There’s more than a month left to go, so various leaderboards are going to change. Performances will change, and perceptions will go along with them. That being said, Kris Bryant has to be thought of as the NL MVP front-runner. By which I mean, I assume he has the most support. And, what a player to throw your support behind! In so many ways, Bryant would be deserving. There’s just one little problem. That one little problem is basically the entire counter-argument.

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There’s a sense that Jake Arrieta isn’t quite what he’s been before. It’s not entirely untrue — a season ago, Arrieta put together a historic campaign. He set the bar so high for himself that it would be next to impossible to meet the updated expectations. But, you know, Arrieta’s still been terrific. Last year, opponents batted .185. This year they’ve batted .183. He ranks fourth among qualified starting pitchers in ERA, and even since his ERA dipped under 1 around the beginning of May, it’s been just a little over 3. Last year’s National League Cy Young came down to Arrieta, Zack Greinke, and Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw’s hurt. Greinke’s already allowed 19 more runs than he did a season ago. Arrieta is doing just fine.

He simply seems a wee bit less automatic. From the perspective of an observer, he’s made it more difficult to take outs for granted. From the perspective of an analyst, Arrieta’s command has wobbled. And what’s maybe most interesting here: Arrieta apparently doesn’t have a feel for his slider. Or cutter. Or whatever. You know what I mean. Arrieta has managed a low ERA while, underneath, he’s had trouble finding what had been one of the truly elite pitches in the game.

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Walks, I think, have suffered from something of a marketing problem. And analysts were in large part responsible, back in OBP’s heyday 10 or 15 years ago. The walk felt underrated, and so in some circles it became maybe overrated. Analysts loved players who walked. But other players didn’t respond so well to that, because, to them, you don’t go up there trying to walk. You go up there trying to hit. In truth, everyone has always seen eye to eye — the goal is to reach base, by avoiding an out. But some damage was done. Low-walk players got tired of talking about their low walk totals. It seemed like a nonsense concern, coming from somewhere outside of the game.

Nolan Arenado has historically been a low-walk player. And, like others, he wasn’t real jazzed to talk about that. An excerpt from this past April:

Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado couldn’t have thought it possible that he’d receive so much attention for not swinging.
[…]
Although the interest in his walks elicited a bemused eye-roll and a sardonic, “Great topic,” Arenado had fun with the subject, and with teammate Carlos Gonzalez.

Arenado didn’t want to hear criticism about his low walks. And, without question, he’s been successful while aggressive. Yet walks aren’t really the point. Walks are a proxy. Drawing a walk means a hitter didn’t swing at too many pitches out of the zone. No hitter wants to swing at too many pitches out of the zone. If you read on in the linked article, you see Arenado talking about how he was seeing the ball better. Arenado talked about what felt like better discipline. That’s all anyone’s ever wanted. And, say, Arenado’s stat line looks new.

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Jesus Montero is still just 26 years old, and he’s having a pretty decent season at the plate. He’s batting over .300, and he has his OBP close to .350 and his slugging percentage close to .450. All things considered, that’s not a bad campaign. But for the fact that Montero has spent the summer in Triple-A, and he’s split his time between first base and DH. He’s mostly been the DH.

It’s hard to believe now that Montero spent three consecutive years within the Baseball America prospect top-10. Though the pop remains in his bat, there’s pretty much nothing else to speak of, and Montero has stood as a cautionary tale to those who’ve been high on Gary Sanchez. Not only did they rise through the same system — Montero and Sanchez have had similar roles and similar strengths, with similar criticisms and similar questions. They even made similar first impressions. At least for the time being, Montero is there to keep Sanchez fans grounded.

Yet Gary Sanchez is no Jesus Montero. I get that the parallels are many. But the profiles are dramatically different. Sanchez is looking like he can hit. Even more importantly, Sanchez is looking like he can catch.

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Here’s a little game for you to play: Try to name, off the top of your head, the current Oakland A’s starting rotation. It’s not so easy. It’s not even easy for me, and I’m the guy on staff in charge of the A’s team depth chart. Sonny Gray is sidelined. Rich Hill is gone. Henderson Alvarez never showed up. On and on it goes. The upside is that, at this point, the rotation doesn’t matter much, since Oakland’s games don’t matter much. The downside is that Oakland’s games don’t matter much, partly because a quality rotation never came together.

Yet in some ways it can be liberating when everything goes wrong. You get to experiment as an organization a little more, because you don’t have to put up with the burden of stakes. You can try things out, just to see, and for no other reason or reasons. Because of the way things have gone, the A’s have had to scramble for pitching help. Monday, they got six shutout innings from an unlikely starter against the Indians. That starter? Andrew Triggs.

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Sandy Leon isn’t the best hitter in baseball, but if you set the plate-appearance minimum low enough, then he shows up as the big-league leader in wRC+. He steadfastly refuses to cool off, and so far he has saved the Red Sox behind the plate. It’s a heck of a story.

Mike Zunino isn’t the best hitter in baseball, but if you set the plate-appearance minimum even lower, then he shows up as the big-league leader in wRC+. Maybe that’s not fair to Leon, but then, lowering the threshold for Leon isn’t fair to everyone else. Zunino was brought up for good about a month ago in order to bump Chris Iannetta, and he’s helped to fuel a Mariner surge in the standings. Given what Zunino had been through before, it’s a heck of a story, as well. Zunino is but 25 years old, yet he’s already been to baseball hell.

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Sometimes things don’t work out. For example, this morning, I dropped my bagel when I was climbing the stairs. Had things gone according to plan, I would have not dropped my bagel when I was climbing the stairs. Unfortunate for me. Arguably unfortunate for the bagel.

And then, sometimes, things do work out. For example, last Friday, I chatted a little bit about Keon Broxton. Then while I was away for the weekend, Broxton came through with five hits, including three dingers. It can be hard to know what to write about on the other side of a weekend. Broxton is making it easy. Now I have all the excuse I need to urge you to jump on the Keon Broxton bandwagon. Before too long this train could pull away from the station.

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I don’t remember hearing much about controlling the running game until the whole Jon Lester episode. I mean, it’s always been important, but it was one of those baseball subtleties until it became public knowledge that Lester went a whole season without attempting a single pickoff. That opened up the gates, and, last year, Lester allowed more stolen bases than anybody else. He yielded 44 out of 55 attempts, and the next-worst steal total was seven behind. Lester knew it was something he had to work on. The Cubs knew it, too. To Lester’s credit, this year he’s allowed just 19 steals. That’s still a lot, relatively speaking, but it’s not astronomical.

Lester is no longer the obvious guy to run against. It does help that he’s left-handed. Steven Matz has allowed 20 stolen bases. That’s third-most. Jimmy Nelson has allowed 22 stolen bases. That’s second-most. Noah Syndergaard has allowed 40 stolen bases. That’s first-most. That’s more than the Indians. That’s more than the Royals. Runners have been unsuccessful just four times in 44 attempts. Noah Syndergaard does a lot of things right, but when it comes to controlling his baserunners, he’s got a real problem.

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It’s been pretty much impossible to ignore what Mookie Betts has been up to. I know that FanGraphs has been rather pro-Betts from the beginning, but even we didn’t think he was likely to hit for this much power. So, he’s exceeding everyone’s expectations, on the way to becoming a legitimate candidate for the league MVP. Dave has written about Betts plenty. He just wrote about him the other day, in fact. And there’s one thing Dave has pointed to a few times: Pitchers should probably change the way they’re pitching. They look at Betts and see a little guy, so they’ve peppered the zone. Results would suggest they should attack with greater caution.

Even now, Betts still sees a lot of strikes. That much, there’s no denying, and any downward trend has been gradual. Maybe that’s going to prove to be a lagging indicator — maybe we shouldn’t expect the zone rate to plummet until 2017. But an adjustment has taken place. It’s been quiet, and it hasn’t even worked out to this point, but pitchers have caught on to the fact that Betts represents a hell of a threat in the box.

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