Is Rendon building a legitimate MVP case?

Davey Martinez first mentioned it last weekend in Chicago, and only when straight-up asked by a reporter if he wanted to make a case for Anthony Rendon as National League MVP.

"I'll make a case for him right now, yeah," the Nationals manager said. "MVP. Gold Glove. My man, Anthony!"

Everyone laughed.

Then Martinez brought it up again late Friday night, unprompted this time after Rendon delivered the walk-off single the Nats needed to beat the Marlins.

"He's been phenomenal," Martinez said. "I say it all the time, but for me he's a candidate for the MVP. He is. He's carried us in big moments all year long."

All of a sudden, it doesn't sound like such a ludicrous proposition.

Consider where Rendon now ranks among all NL hitters.

* He's now leading the league with a .333 batting average.

* He's now second to Freddie Freeman with 107 RBIs.

* He's now second to Christian Yelich with a .412 on-base percentage.

* He's now third to Yelich and Cody Bellinger with a 1.031 OPS.

* He's now fourth in the league to Bellinger, Yelich and the injured Ketel Marte with a 5.9 WAR, per FanGraphs.

And it's not just the total production. It's the significance and the timing of that production. More and more, it feels like Rendon is delivering huge hits in huge spots late in games. And Friday night's walk-off, two-run single was merely the latest example.

"For me, 95 percent of the time I can count on him doing the job there," teammate Victor Robles said, via interpreter Octavio Martinez. "Honestly, I look at the at-bat and focus in on him and the actual at-bat to learn something from him. Like I said, I'm 95 percent of the time sure that he is going to do the job for us."

"I'm lucky he's on my team," newly acquired reliever Daniel Hudson said. "He's pretty much a complete hitter. Maybe in that situation (second and third, one out in the ninth) you just put him on first. It would definitely be a tough at-bat. I couldn't tell you how to attack him. Maybe just try to flip him a bunch of sliders and see if he'll get himself out? It's been fun to watch him the last month. He's been on a tear and just doing MVP things."

The crowd of 26,201 at Nationals Park certainly believed so, serenading Rendon with chants of "MVP! MVP!" as he was being interviewed on the field moments after his game-winner.

Rendon, true to form, shrugged it off.

"People gonna be people," he said.

He can try to ignore the hype all he wants, but the rest of the baseball world is noticing. He earned his first career All-Star selection earlier this summer. If he keeps this up, he might just force everyone to consider giving him his first career MVP vote.