David Huzzard: No question, Bryce Harper is NL MVP

The very fact that Bryce Harper's legitimacy as National League Most Valuable Player is up for debate is an absurdity. The MVP award is an individual award meant to be handed out to the best player in a league at the end of the season, but too many people get caught up in the word "value" and end up trying to give it some meaning beyond simply being the best.

The problem for opponents of Harper is if you debate the merits of Harper as MVP on baseball terms, you lose. Harper is the first player since Barry Bonds in 2004 to have an over 200 wRC+, his 1.137 OPS would be the highest since Barry Bonds in 2004 and the first over 1.100 since Albert Pujols in 2008, and he leads the NL in runs, home runs, batting average, on-base percentage and slugging. If that isn't enough for you to think that Harper is the best player in the league - and its most valuable player - then I can't help you.

What I can do is put Harper's season into some historical context. Harper's 1.137 OPS would be the 51st-highest of all time right above Jason Giambi in 2001 and below Rogers Hornsby in 1929. Harper's .467 OPS currently has him tied with 1928 Lou Gehrig on the all-time single-season list. He's the only active player in the top 100 and the highest since Chipper Jones in 2008.

By now, you may have noticed the quality of names I'm putting next to Harper. We're not just talking about a great individual season. We're talking about a historically great season, and some people want to give the MVP to a guy that had a good second half. We can keep going in naming offensive categories in which Harper is among Hall of Famers. His 204 OPS+ as a 22-year-old is tied with a 27-year-old Barry Bonds on that list.

That's right, Harper is only 22. I feel like a buried the lead on this one as Harper last night became just the sixth player 22 or younger to hit 40 home runs in a season. The only player with a higher OPS than Harper at 22 is Ted Williams, and he hit .400 in what was one of the greatest offensive seasons in the history of baseball that year. Harper shares the top 10 with names like Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Matthews and Stan Musial. And again there are some that don't think Harper is an NL MVP because the Nationals aren't likely to make the playoffs.

This shouldn't even be a debate, and the problem is the voters aren't getting smarter. In 2006, Albert Pujols led the NL in fWAR, OPS and slugging while hitting .331 with 49 home runs and 139 RBIs for a Cardinals team that was the best in baseball. Carlos Beltran was second in fWAR that season, batting .275 with 41 home runs and playing a masterful center field for the playoff-bound New York Mets. There should have been a great debate as to who was the NL MVP. Was it the slugging first baseman or the smooth-fielding center fielder with abnormal power for the position?

Instead, the NL MVP went to Ryan Howard, whose Phillies lost the NL East to Beltran's Mets. But Howard hit 58 home runs. The funniest thing about that though is that according to some advanced stats, Chase Utley was the better player on the Phillies. So not only did the MVP award not go to the best player in the league, it didn't even go to the best player on his team.

Howard hit 58 home runs and was rewarded with the MVP award on a non-playoff team. Harper is not only the best player in the league, but he is having a historically great season and there are some that don't think he's worthy of the MVP award because the Nats are going to miss the playoffs. What changed in nine years, or are home runs that much of a mystical stat that 50-plus homers automatically wins the award? If it's the latter, Harper has 17 more games to hit 10 out and find out if that's enough for the voters.

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.