NL MVP race could come down to Goldschmidt, Arenado

This story was excerpted from John Denton's Cardinals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ST. LOUIS -- Don’t look now, Cardinals fans, but the Redbirds might have not one, but two leading candidates to win the National League MVP Award.

Nolan Arenado, who has finished in the top 10 five times in the race for the NL MVP Award, has entered the chat. And he’s joined star first baseman Paul Goldschmidt by knocking down the door and announcing his presence with his usually brilliant defense and a bat that’s hotter than an August in St. Louis.

It’s no coincidence that the Cardinals have started playing their best baseball at a time when Arenado is hitting everything in sight and continuously drawing oohs and ahhs with his Gold Glove-caliber defense at third base. Arenado came into Sunday’s final game against the Yankees having slashed .327/.433/.636 with four home runs and nine RBIs in his previous 16 games. He drove in the game’s lone run in the 1-0 win over the Yanks on Saturday night, then went out and did one better on Sunday afternoon.

After the Cardinals had gone down 1-0, Arenado drove a single through the left side for a game-tying RBI. Then, after Adam Wainwright uncharacteristically fell into a 4-1 hole, Arenado vaulted the Cards back into the lead with a three-run home run into the Yankees' bullpen -- a blast that brought on a curtain call request by the Busch Stadium crowd.

Earlier in the year, when Arenado hit .375 with five home runs and 17 RBIs to win the NL’s Player of the Month Award for April, the superstar third baseman admitted that winning his first MVP Award would be a crowning moment in his already fabulous career. From 2015-18, he finished eighth, fifth, fourth and third in the race for the award. This season could produce his highest finish yet, namely him getting his hands on one of the top honors in baseball.

“It would be special, and it would mean a lot to me, but I just want to win,” Arenado said earlier this season after hitting a game-winning home run in Miami.

The Cardinals are winning more these days after Arenado hit .338 with five home runs and 11 RBIs in July. In early August, he’s been even better (.476, three home runs and eight RBIs in six games). Of course, Arenado still has some work to do to catch Goldschmidt, who leads the NL in batting average (.332), on-base percentage (.415) and slugging (.614).

“Sometimes that guy can just will things to happen, and the look in his eye right now is pretty special,” manager Oliver Marmol said of Arenado. “We’ve got two guys [in Arenado and Goldschmidt] who are having pretty incredible seasons on all sides of it -- defensively and offensively. They’re contributing at an incredibly high level.”

Over the past year and a half, the Cardinals have rarely had Goldschmidt and Arenado hitting at the same time. As evidence of that, they have homered in the same game just five times. Granted, St. Louis is 5-0 in those games, but the team would like to see it happen more often.

And if Arenado and Goldschmidt finish first and second in NL MVP Award voting -- with either winning it for the first time -- it would almost assuredly mean great things are ahead for the Cardinals.