Josh Donaldson and Bryce Harper are letting their bats and gloves do all the talking in the 2015 MLB MVP conversation.
While the Toronto Blue Jays third baseman and the Washington Nationals right fielder are the front-runners for baseball's most prestigious award in the American League and the National League, respectively, there's an assortment of other standouts who have also played their way into the MVP mix.
The first step in compiling the list that follows was figuring out just which stars qualify as "top candidates." All the players who were taken into consideration are enjoying brilliant individual seasons and are among the league leaders in stats like OPS, WAR and home runs for position players, or ERA and FIP for pitchers.
But the idea here was to focus on players who have a legitimate shot at garnering first-place votes. With that qualification in place, the field is significantly smaller in the AL than in the NL, where a slew of challengers will need a major late-season push to catch Harper. Right now, none of those hopefuls is making a bigger charger than New York Mets left fielder Yoenis Cespedes.
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