Can Nolan Arenado Unseat Kris Bryant as NL's MVP in 2017?

Kris Bryant ran away with the National League MVP voting in 2016. By default, that makes him the favorite to win the award again in 2017.

But will a worthy challenger appear from the west?

At the least, Nolan Arenado is trending toward an MVP as he prepares to enter his fifth season with the Colorado Rockies. He finished eighth in the voting in 2015 and fifth in the voting last year.

The 25-year-old third baseman was mainly known for his defense in 2013 and 2014. But in the last two seasons, he's kept churning out defensive highlights while pacing the Senior Circuit in three notable offensive categories:

Year	HR	RBI	Total Bases
2015	42	130	354
2016	41	133	352

Forget the guy who put up an ugly 5-for-31 for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic. The real Nolan Arenado is the one represented by the above table and a trophy case with four Gold Gloves in it. He's one of the baddest dudes in Major League Baseball on both sides of the ball.

However, him leaping from fifth to first in the MVP voting will require more than just doing the same ol' thing and hoping for better results. He'll need to be better, and the Rockies will need to be better.

My faith that Arenado can handle the former is part of what made him my pick for the 2017 NL MVP going into spring training. Although it's hard to ask him to be better on defense than he already is—seriously, though—there still appears to be upside in his bat.

Rich Schultz/Getty Images

Arenado used to have a fatal offensive flaw. He was one of baseball's most aggressive swingers in his first three seasons, and a lot of what he swung at was junk outside the strike zone. He didn't strike out more than the average hitter despite this, but he left a lot of walks on the table.

Suddenly, he looked like a different hitter last year. 

He posted easily his lowest swing and chase rates and boosted his BB% to a career-best 9.8. He didn't have to sacrifice any pop to make that happen, as his big power spike from 2015 carried over into 2016.

Arenado's strides with his discipline are tied to improvements in his pitch recognition. He was already getting better at laying off breaking stuff, so it was probably just a matter of time before he started spitting on off-speed stuff, too. Sure enough, that happened in 2016.

His power, meanwhile, is becoming more potent every year because he's doing everything possible to hit for more power. Namely: more frequent fly balls, pulled balls and hard contact. Like so:

Year	FB%	Pull%	Hard%
2013	33.7	35.4	28.7
2014	41.8	45.3	33.9
2015	43.9	45.6	36.2
2016	46.7	45.7	37.9

Yeah, his pull tendency led to an increase in shifts last year. But he knew that was going to happen, and he might as well have said, "Bring it on."

"I'm going to see it more this year than I've seen it in the past—a lot of the homers I hit were to left, and I pull the ball a lot," Arenado said last March, according to Thomas Harding of MLB.com. "But that's OK. I really trust my swing, and I really like to use the whole field when I need to."

The shifts will be equally powerless in 2017 if he continues his pattern of improvements. Nobody should be surprised if he does even better than the gaudy numbers he's put up in the last two seasons.

But while numbers alone can win a player an MVP—see Andre Dawson in 1987, Alex Rodriguez in 2003 and Mike Trout in 2016—that's not going to happen for Arenado.

Mark Kiszla of the Denver Post hit on why in discussing Arenado's MVP chances last season:

"

Raising the fences in Coors Field might help Colorado pitchers, but it won’t help Arenado with the nationwide perception that any hitter can have a big year at altitude.

"

Since there's not much Arenado can do about that, the best he can hope for is that his big numbers are part of a larger MVP-friendly narrative that he was in the driver's seat for a contending team.

And there's the rub.

Norm Hall/Getty Images

After winning just 75 games last year, the Rockies looked like a possible dark-horse contender at the outset of spring training. But they've since been attacked by the injury bug, which has felled young outfielder David Dahl and $70 million first baseman Ian Desmond. Right-hander Chad Bettis, sadly, needs chemotherapy treatment after learning an offseason bout with testicular cancer isn't over yet.

The Rockies are now projected for 76 wins at Baseball Prospectus and 77 wins at FanGraphs. There's quite a bit of distance between there and the 85 or so wins they'll need to contend for a Wild Card spot.

The only way the Rockies are going to outperform their projections is if a whole bunch of guys are better than expected at the same time. Improbable? Yes.

But possible? Also yes.

On offense, the Rockies will just need Charlie Blackmon, DJ LeMahieu and Carlos Gonzalez to pick up where they left off in 2016. And for Trevor Story to do the same and stay healthy this time. And for Dahl to build on his promising breakthrough once he gets healthy. And for Desmond to hit like he did in the first half of 2016 when he heals up.

On the mound, the absent Bettis is only one of four above-average starters the Rockies had last year. The other three are still around, and each has potential. Jon Gray is a guy with big stuff and ace potential. Tyler Anderson is a master of soft contact. Tyler Chatwood is a master of ground balls.

Then there's the bullpen, which Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post wrote was modeled after the pens of the Kansas City Royals. That's most evident in the trio the Rockies have lined up for the late innings. Adam Ottavino, Jake McGee and Greg Holland have all been elite relievers within recent history.

“I think we have a dynamic bullpen here, a lot of good arms,” said Holland, according to Saunders. “Plus, we have some veteran guys, which is good. From a standpoint of our talent, I think we are capable of being successful. That’s what we all anticipate.”

There's a lot here that needs to go right, but it's not as if the Rockies are hoping that a bunch of dead weight comes alive. They have a nice balance of young guys with upside and veterans with track records.

If it does indeed come together, Arenado will find himself standing before the MVP voters with shiny numbers in one hand and a shiny narrative in the other. It'll be hard for them to turn him away.

Data courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball.