Who will win it? With only one day left in the regular season, I only see these players in contention.
Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers
Andrew McCutchen, Pittsburgh Pirates
Yadier Molina, St. Louis Cardinals
David Wright, New York Mets
Is there anyone else?
Buster Posey is leading the league in WAR and is playing for a division winner, with an OPS close to 1.000 primarily playing catcher.
On the other hand, he has a silly name.
Buster Posey, who might actually get my vote.
Wright has no shot. No Met has a shot. There are teams that actually accomplished something this year, you know.
Posey should and will win.
Despite his excellent numbers, I don’t think Ryan Braun has a prayer of finishing in the top five. He’s widely (and correctly, in my opinion) regarded as a cheater who got off scot-free on a technicality. A large number of writers will leave him off their ballots entirely.
That’s not much of a punishment for what he did, but it’s something.
I’d still vote for McCutcheon, but the Pirates’ collapse means he probably can’t win.
I’d say Posey will get it, i na close vote.
Another player worthy of note, but also falling short of Posey (and probably most of the others mentioned in the OP) is Chase Headley of the Padres. Who would have picked him to lead the league in RBI at the beginning of the year?
I am a Giants fan, and believe that Posey deserves and will win it. That said, both Braun and McCutcheon are valid, deserving alternatives.
Headley’s MVP argument has a lot of merit, none of it having to to do with his teammates getting on base. I think that Posey or McCutcheon are worthy choices, and would be fine with either winning.
I know that Milwaukee and St Louis are Midwest cities, but the term “East Coast Bias” still comes to mind here…and the OP is even in the Bay Area!
Buster Posey
It’s a darn sight better than ‘Gerald Dempsey’ 
At this point, he’s almost certain to win the batting title, as well. He could go 0-5 tonight while McCutchen goes 5-5 and still come out ahead.
I’m biased as all hell, admittedly, but in my mind there’s no way Posey doesn’t win the MVP.
He’ll have to go 7-7 to beat Melky Cabrera, who has a .3456 batting average after you adjust it to 502 plate appearances to qualify.
Wow - that’s pretty classy. Part of me is cynical, and says that he wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t a teammate up for the title in his stead, but (other than the PEDs) Melky seems like a good guy. I also think it was an interesting call for the Giants to pull Cabrera from the post-season, even though he’d be eligible.
Since the batting title isn’t an award, but rather a statistical calculation, I don’t see how Cabrera can actually remove himself from consideration. I understand it’s all an ‘image rehabilitation’ issue, but really what are they going to do? Simply erase him from the stat sheets?
I agree that “consideration” is a strange word for this. But basically he asked MLB to declare him ineligible and they did. I assume that in the offseason they’ll pass a rule that says either you can’t win the batting title if you are suspended for PEDs, or that you can’t win it if you didn’t get enough at-bats because of a PED suspension.
It’s the latter, Marley. They’ll say that you cannot do the “add enough ABs with outs to get to the threshold” calculation if the reason you didn’t get enough ABs was a PED suspension.
As to the OP, I think it has to be Posey.
I’m a long-time SF Giants fan. I left Posey off my list on purpose, to see where the discussion might go.
Go Giants! Go Posey!
There’s been a fair bit of discussion in San Francisco about whether or not they should have put Cabrera on the post-season roster, with opinions ranging from “hell yes, a bat is a bat, and they can use all they can get” to “hell no, ship the bastard back to the Dominican Republic where he belongs”.
The prevailing opinion seems to have been that it didn’t make sense from a baseball perspective for a few reasons
a) He wouldn’t be eligible to return until the 6th game of the post-season, which might, depending on how the Division Series goes, require the Giants to play a man short for the beginning of the NLCS. that would be widely regarded as a ‘bad thing’.
b) He wouldn’t have played baseball (at least not at a professional level) in two months, so there’s no reason to think he’d still be in ‘top form’ even disregarding any ‘enhanced performance’ issues It’s therefore questionable whether he’d be in good enough shape to have a positive impact on the field.
c) The team chemistry seems to be pretty good at this point, and Cabrera’s departure from the team was not widely seen as ‘friendly’ (apparently he basically took off without saying a word to the team), so his return for the playoffs may or may not cause tension in the clubhouse.
All that being said, I wouldn’t be shocked to see him in a Giants uniform next year. It’s likely that he’ll be available at a bargain price…