Brad Hawpe, the Overlooked Colorado Rockies Player

The balloting for the 2007 NL MVP may have been all but locked up on the night of September 25, when Prince Fielder hit his second home-run of the game in against the Cardinals. Despite the fact that there is an unwritten rule in baseball that the Player with the Most Home-runs is immediately a front-runner for that league's MVP, young Prince did pretty much all he could as he carried the Brewers on his back in their quixotic quest for the first postseason appearance in a quarter-century. Sadly for fans in Milwaukee it was not to be- leaving many a dry pants in the land of Cheeseheads. Still, with his emergence as an offensive force to be reckoned with and the heart of the Brewers line-up, Prince Fielder is the prohibitive favorite to win this year's NL MVP award.

With the benefit of hindsight granted by their amazing postseason run, the Colorado Rockies' late-season run to tie for the league's wild-card spot and eventually forcing themselves into the playoffs shouldn't be overlooked by the scribes that decide the seasonal awards. Sadly, as it is the Colorado Rockies we're talking about here, thanks to a traditional East Coast bias, the Rockies' run and postseason appearance may have been interpreted as nothing more than a feel-good endnote to the 2007 season. If it was taken with serious weight by any of the baseball writers deciding the league's individual award winners, I'm sure that most attention will be placed on the Rockies' team leader Matt Holliday, who by capturing the other two Triple Crown legs thanks to a .340 batting average and 137 RBIs in just his second full season has brought to mind the Blake Street Bombers of Andres Galaragga, Vinny Castilla, and Larry Walker in the Rockies' offensive glory days of the 1990s. By any indication, Holliday should be Fielder's chief rival for the 2007 NL MVP, if not the outright winner.