Go to Rio for a month and look at what happens. Babe Ruth is resurrected, and he’s hitting right-handed and playing catcher. The Giants, the best team in baseball at the All-Star break, are literally the worst since. Ian Kennedy’s ERA in August can be spelled out in binary code. Baseball does this. Every month is its own little season of the absurd, the impossible, the unrepeatable, the glorious.

Only two things are the same.

10 Degrees More

a) Clayton Kershaw, on the disabled list for two months, still has the best numbers of any pitcher in baseball. (This is patently absurd, by the way.)

b) The American League MVP race is a completely jumbled mess.

And, as an AL MVP voter this season, I love it. A contentious awards race only adds to the intrigue of a September that currently has 10 of 15 AL teams and 8 of 15 NL teams with legitimate playoff aspirations. That’s a 60 percent meaningful-September rate. Not bad.

The MVP race is even better. At the risk of unleashing the baseball Breitbarts by having the temerity to put …

1. Mike Trout first in this conversation, well, consider that Pandora’s box open. Now, this does not mean Trout is on top of my ballot at the moment. Honestly, I don’t even want to engage in one of those if-the-season-ended-today hypotheticals because more than 30 games remain, and extraordinary things happen over those 30 games. Trout is here mainly because I came across something during research that dumbfounded me.





Yes, that is the leaderboard for the last five seasons of Wins Above Replacement as judged by Baseball-Reference.com. Trout leads FanGraphs’ WAR during those five years, too. I was curious: When we the last time a player led his league five straight years?

Prime Albert Pujols? Nope. Four straight, from 2006-09. Surely Barry Bonds? Nuh-uh. Just four, 2001-04. To find the next with four straight, go back more than half a century, to Willie Mays, from 1962-65. And before that, Mickey Mantle, ’55 to ’58. Generation after generation, no one managed to lead his league in WAR for half a decade.

The last player was Babe Ruth, from 1926-31. Only Walter Johnson, from 1912-16, did it before him. Trout this year could accomplish something that hasn’t been seen in 85 years. And history says … well, we’ll save that little nugget for later, because it encapsulates everything about Trout’s first five years in the big leagues, and for now we need to look at the rest of the candidates. So, without further ado …

2. Jose Altuve can bat leadoff, which he has done with striking aplomb this season for the Houston Astros. Currently, Altuve is leading the AL in batting average (.355) and ranks second in on-base percentage (.415), third in slugging (.565), third in stolen bases (26) and second in strikeout rate (10.1%). He is the odds-on favorite, at least according to handicappers.

View photos Jose Altuve’s .355 batting average leads Major League Baseball. (Getty) More

Trout is, more or less, Altuve’s equal. His .312 batting average is sixth, his .431 OBP first, his .546 slugging percentage eighth, his 21 stolen bases fourth. Trout’s walk rate leads the AL. Their OPS is almost identical, their OPS+ about the same, and Trout is generally considered the superior baserunner and plays a harder position. This is why he grades out higher in WAR.

What’s working in Altuve’s favor is his team, and here’s the thing: The Astros’ fortunes aren’t looking great at the moment. Baseball Prospectus pegs Houston’s playoff chances at about 23 percent. MLB.com has them at 22 percent. FanGraphs says it’s less than 20 percent. Which means it’s quite likely that Jose Altuve will be spending his October in the same place as Mike Trout: home.

Story continues