Major League Baseball Midseason Awards: National League

LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 07: Yasmani Grandal
LOS ANGELES, CA - JULY 07: Yasmani Grandal /
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MIAMI, FL – JULY 10: Ryan Zimmerman
MIAMI, FL – JULY 10: Ryan Zimmerman /

Comeback Player of the Year: Ryan Zimmerman 

What a story. Not only is Zimmerman the best bounce-back player in the NL, for the first two months of the season, he was the discussion for the best player in the league period.

Although Zimmerman has cooled off from where he was in April and May, he is still putting up fantastic numbers. As good as his .373 OBP and 146 OPS+ (as of the break0 looks they are even more impressive considering where Zimmerman was just one year ago.

In 2016, Zimmerman had a WAR of -1.3 according to FanGraphs. Although his current WAR of 2.1 doesn’t measure up to Harper or Goldschmidt, it is still a night and day difference from last season.

While guys like Harper, Scherzer and Daniel Murphy make up a bulk of the talent for the Washington Nationals, Zimmerman, to me, is the heart of that team. He has been in D.C. since the franchise moved there from Montreal in 2005, and has experienced a lot of ups and downs along the way. At 32, it’s hard to tell how much time Zimmerman has left in our nation’s capital or baseball at all. Right now, he is in the midst of a career renaissance, and that is something that all of us should respect.