McCutchen's MVP Hopes, Slipping Away?

Until recently, Andrew McCutchen was the no-brainer choice for National League MVP. From the beginning of the season through July, he hit .371/.428/.629 with 22 home runs, leading the Pirates to a top three record in the league. If those aren't MVP numbers, you aren't going to find MVP numbers anywhere. However, the month of August hasn't been kind to him. He's hit .257/.371/.378 with just two homers and has watched his season line drop to .352/.418/.587, which is still pretty ridiculous. If the season ended today, the Pirates would be in the playoffs and McCutchen would run away with the MVP award.

But the season doesn't end today. The Pirates have forty games left to play, and a lot can change in forty games. Let's look at a few of the other MVP contenders.

Ryan Braun, the reigning National League MVP, is having another strong season after he got out of a fifty game suspension from a positive PED test on what some believe was a technicality. I've never been one to say that it was a technicality, I'm inclined to believe that he really was innocent. However, that still plays a major factor in his 2012 season. For the year he has a .306/.382/.591 line, which really doesn't compare to McCutchen's line. However, he leads the league in homers with 33 and is second in RBI with 83. His 5.0 WAR in fourth in the league according to Baseball-Reference. McCutchen is first in the league with a 6.1 mark.

There are two other guys that could factor into this discussion - David Wright and Buster Posey. Wright is hitting .320/.412/.522 with 16 homers and 75 RBI while playing a good third base in one of baseball's biggest markets. Again, the numbers really don't stack up at all with Cutch, but he's a contender. Posey is having a monster year with a line of .327/.402/.539 and 19 homers and 77 RBI. Once again, the numbers just don't compare to what McCutchen has done, but the way things are trending right now, they could soon.

One thing that we have to consider is how the teams are doing. The Pirates are in the heat of a wild card race, the Giants are battling with the Dodgers for the top spot in the West, and the Brewers and Mets really aren't contending right now. That will definitely hurt Braun and Wright. It certainly hurt Matt Kemp last year. He had better numbers than Braun but lost the voting because his team wasn't relevant late in the season. So as long as the Brewers and Mets don't go absolutely crazy with wins these last 40 games, Braun and Wright are out of the discussion (providing they don't end up with way better stats than the rest of the pack, which is very unlikely).

So it looks like a race between McCutchen and Posey. One darkhorse might be R.A. Dickey, who probably feels better about his chances since Justin Verlander won the award as a pitcher last year. Dickey has a 2.82 ERA with a 15-4 record this year. Once again, he's on a non-contending team and is in a league with at least one guy that will finish with big offensive numbers, so I for right now I don't think he has a shot.

If McCutchen can even have an average final forty games, he should be the frontrunner for the MVP award. It would certainly help if the Pirates make the playoffs or at least get very close to doing so. The Giants are going to be in contention the whole way as well, but like I said before, Posey's numbers really don't compare to Cutch's.

Long story short, Pittsburgh has a very, very good chance at having the National League MVP wear their team's jersey.