One consequence of the widespread apathy with which the existence of the National League has rightly been treated this year has been the complete indifference shown toward what’s turning into a rather exciting race for the circuit’s Most Valuable Player award.

Since the race involves all the issues that usually rouse passions unseen outside discussions of rights and obligations in Northern Ireland, you’d expect fevered promotion of some candidates, outraged defenses of others, accusations of insanity and irrelevance, and all the other fun that usually accompanies late-August discussions of candidacy for the various baseball awards. There’s been precious little; instead you have pundits and fans more or less reasonably agreeing that there are several deserving candidates and that we should wait and see how September plays out before deciding who deserves to win.

Until a week or two ago, this looked like a two-man race.You had Mets center fielder Carlos Beltran and Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols, and each had his case, with Beltran’s superior defense, durability, and baserunning being offset by Pujols’ somewhat superior offense. Here was the provocation for a thousand angry barstool debates, especially with one of the more ridiculous MVP arguments floating around, that being essentially that the Mets are too good for Beltran to be valuable. Because the Cardinals are nowhere near as good as the Mets, the reasoning goes, Pujols’s contributions carry extra weight; the Mets would be good without Beltran, after all, whereas the Cardinals would be really bad without Pujols.

This being the criteria, clearly the MVP would go to Carlos Zambrano of the Cubs, a strong Cy Young candidate on a wretched team. Instead, it looks likely to go to either Pujols or to one of two other candidates for whom a similar argument can be advanced: Philadelphia’s Ryan Howard or Florida’s Miguel Cabrera. This is a shame.

Howard’s case is basically this: He has monster power numbers, with 47 home runs and 122 RBI already, and he’s led the Phillies’ limp charge towards the wild card. Cabrera’s case is essentially the same; he’s led a really unimpressive Marlins team right up to a near-.500 record (and thus, because of this year’s parity, playoff contention) with his .340 batting average and solid power numbers despite a lack of protection in the lineup.

There’s no case whatsoever that either player is actually better than Pujols or Beltran. Howard is hitting .294 BA/.382 OBA/.628 SLG in a bandbox, with bad though not awful first base defense; Beltran is hitting .286/.389./631 in Shea with Gold Glove-caliber center field defense, his usual, historically excellent baserunning, and a long list of walk-off hits of varying sorts to match Howard’s developing (and warranted) reputation for clutch hitting.When a fat, slow first baseman doesn’t even have a better hitting line than an all-around center fielder, though, no cavets are needed. And his case against Pujols is just as clear: Pujols plays the same position at Gold Glove level, is hitting .323/.424/.665, and has a fair reputation himself for late-inning heroics. When you’re clearly inferior to another player at your own position, you’re not the MVP.

Cabrera, despite his excellent .339/.428/.588 line, is clearly the least of the four players. The reason is simple: Pujols and Beltran are excellent defenders, Howard is passable, and Cabrera is an absolute atrocity at third base. The best in-season defensive numbers I’m aware of, Chris Dial’s (available at baseballthinkfactory.org, and often plugged here because his defensive research is incredibly impressive) paint Cabrera as a murderous butcher, and anyone who’s seen him play will think they’re being too kind. He has no range, no attention span, and has been known to make multiple avoidable errors in an inning. He’s a great player because of his bat, but it’s only by some nebulous criteria involving a sub-.500 team’s involvement in the wild card race that he can elbow his way into the argument here.

That leaves us back where we started, with Pujols and Beltran.You can massage the numbers however you want, but they always come out backing up common sense — their edges in various areas cancel each other out, leaving you with two players of equal value. You can point to Beltran’s .347 road batting average and his top notch play in the outfield despite the carousels on either side of him as advantages for him; you can point to Pujols’ immense desire in playing through injury and otherwordly clutch performance as advantages for him. To this point in the season, they’re equals.

Are they really, though? Leaving the numbers aside, is there anyone who, given the choice between players of equal value, wouldn’t take the one who plays a position at which it’s more difficult to find top talent? And why, in such a case, shouldn’t the fact that the Mets are much better than the Cardinals work in Beltran’s favor? After all, no one would pretend that statistics capture all of a player’s value, and whatever value of Beltran’s isn’t captured in the numbers is surely to be found in that gaudy team winning percentage.

In all, it’s as close as we’ve thought, and if I were betting I’d say Howard hits 60 home runs for an 80-win team and wins it. If nothing else, though, the matter should be inspiring some disproportionately angry arguments. Go forth, drink, and take up Howard’s cause; it’s a fine dog days tradition.