The Los Angeles Dodgers have played a better brand of baseball lately under manager Don Mattingly, so the question du jour is no longer, "Can a losing team produce the National League's Most Valuable Player and Cy Young Award winner in the same season?''

Matt Kemp is third in the National League in home runs (33) and is second in RBIs (109). Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

The question should now read, "Can a .500-caliber team overcome a series of embarrassments, ownership upheaval and waning fan interest to produce the MVP and Cy Young winner in the same season?''

The candidates' names are Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw, and they've done an impressive job surmounting the chaos and bringing their "A'' games to the park from Opening Day through Labor Day. Their efforts haven't been enough to keep Frank and Jamie McCourt out of the news entirely. But hey, any contribution toward that goal is a step in the right direction.

Kemp, 26, has fulfilled scouting director Logan White's early predictions of stardom while reinventing his image on the fly. He's moved beyond the knee-jerk characterizations of Matt Kemp-as-Blake Griffin's buddy, Rihanna's former boyfriend, the Oklahoma kid sidetracked by "Hollywood fever'' or the guy who drove Larry Bowa from the third base coach's box to a TV gig with his stubbornness and lack of coachability. These days, Kemp is just your basic, garden-variety, five-tool player who torments opponents in every way imaginable.

Kershaw, the seventh overall pick in the 2006 draft, has emerged as the state of Texas' next great contribution to the pitching profession. Judging from his inclusion in the Cy Young Award conversation with the likes of Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee, he's crossed the barrier that distinguishes precocious from mature, and apprentice from accomplished. At age 23, he's established himself as the real deal.

"If you take those two away from this team, we're not even close to having a chance of being .500,'' said Dodgers infielder Jamey Carroll.

Award-seeking missiles

In the absence of riveting postseason races (until recently), baseball analysts and bloggers have spent an inordinate amount of time dissecting the various award competitions. It's more than a case of just culling through the stats and comparing apples to apples.

There's the question of whether Detroit's Justin Verlander should win the MVP even though he's contributing only once every five days. Beyond that, should Toronto right fielder Jose Bautista win the award with superior numbers while playing for a team that's spent one day within 10 games of first place since the All-Star break? And while we're at it, how should voters assess the value of Wins Above Replacement, given that mere fractions separate most of the candidates in this category?

Meanwhile, the "horse-race'' faction of the media tries to predict what impact vote-splitting have on the results, with Milwaukee teammates Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun and fellow Red Sox standouts Adrian Gonzalez, Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia all under consideration for MVP.

Kemp and Kershaw add another element to the equation -- the hardware-seeking tag team.

As Scott Randall of ESPN Stats & Information points out, it's actually quite commonplace for teammates to capture the MVP and Cy Young Awards. There have been 18 position player-pitcher combinations to bag the two awards in the same season.

But losing teams -- or even average teams -- need not apply. Of the 18 clubs with an MVP and Cy Young winner, 17 advanced to the postseason. The only exception was the 1962 Dodgers (with MVP Maury Wills and Cy Young recipient Don Drysdale), who won 102 games but lost the pennant to San Francisco in a playoff.