The Colorado Rockies pretty much buried the Arizona Diamondbacks with a 10-3 victory at Coors Field on Thursday to take three out of four in the series. Back on Aug. 22, the Diamondbacks led the NL West by 1½ games and FanGraphs gave them a 43 percent chance of winning the division and 65 percent chance of making the playoffs. Since then they've gone 6-14 and those odds are down to 1.5 percent and 3.1 percent.

Colorado's Trevor Story once again came up big, going 2-for-4, scoring three runs and blasting this long home run to give the Rockies a 4-1 lead in the third inning:

Rockies single-season home run record for a shortstop! Oh...and it went 471ft!!



Volume 3, Chapter 33 #StoryTime 📚 pic.twitter.com/jVRX0FBaJM — Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) September 13, 2018

When you hit it 471 feet, you can flip your bat.

In D.C., the Chicago Cubs flew into town to face the Washington Nationals for a makeup game and won 4-3 in 10 innings. Javier Baez, who homered earlier in the game, drove in the go-ahead run with a bunt single:

Don't ask questions, just take the run. pic.twitter.com/dm5tWFPOf2 — Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) September 13, 2018

With the Milwaukee Brewers off, the Cubs take a 1½-game lead in the NL Central. Kris Bryant, who was on third base after a leadoff double off Sean Doolittle, said he was fortunate Ryan Zimmerman didn't catch the ball.

"I didn't know if he was going to catch it or not," Bryant said. "Thankfully, he didn't because I probably was too far off the bag. We needed something to fall our way and that was certainly the play that did."

This gets us to the NL MVP discussion, in which Baez might be the favorite now and Story is making a late push to insert himself into the argument. (The three most valuable players in the National League have been pitchers Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer and Aaron Nola, but there doesn't seem to be any momentum to consider them for MVP honors like Clayton Kershaw in 2014 or Justin Verlander in 2011.)

The numbers:

Baez: .295/.329/.568, 31 HR, 103 RBIs, 92 runs, 21 SB, 5.3 bWAR, 4.8 fWAR

Story: .292/.347/.559, 33 HR, 102 RBIs, 81 runs, 25 SB, 4.8 bWAR, 4.5 fWAR

In most seasons, neither player is likely a strong MVP candidate. But no NL player is putting up a dominant season, so the race remains wide open. Baez does lead the league in RBIs, with Story one behind, and while MVP voters don't worship RBIs like they once did, their supporters will certainly use that number as MVP justification. Baez ranks fifth and sixth in Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs WAR, and Story ranks ninth and 11th (before Thursday's games).

Baez is certainly one of the most unique MVP candidates I've ever seen. His strikeout-to-walk ratio of 146 to 24 is usually that of a player who gets sent to Triple-A rather than what you see from one of the best players in the league. He still has zero discipline at the plate -- his chase rate of 45.2 percent is last among 145 qualified batters -- but with his blazing bat speed, he murders the ball if you leave it over the plate. His OPS on pitches in the strike zone is third in the majors behind only J.D. Martinez and Mike Trout (so imagine if he controlled those swings on pitches outside the zone even a little bit).

Baez's .329 OBP drags down his value. He's producing runs, but he's using up outs to do so. In the past 50 years, only two MVP winners had a sub-.350 OBP: Jimmy Rollins in 2007 (.344) and Andre Dawson in 1987 (.328). Dawson is widely viewed as one of the worst MVP choices ever.

Baez, of course, has hidden value in his positional flexibility. He has started 72 games at second, 39 at shortstop and 18 at third base. His ability to move around the diamond allowed the Cubs to trade for Daniel Murphy to play second base. Also, Baez has been the one consistent force all season in the Cubs' lineup as Anthony Rizzo got off to a slow start and Bryant missed a large chunk of the season with injury.