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	Thursday, November 16
	NL race was a real tossup ESPN.com
	Editor's note: ESPN's Dave Campbell analyzes the race for the NL MVP Award. Jeff Kent's margin of victory in this MVP race is a little bigger than I thought it would be. I expected a closer vote. Maybe I've been watching too much election coverage. It would be interesting to know how the two San Francisco writers voted. People who cover a team on a daily basis probably have the best feel for which one of two guys on the same team was truly the most valuable player. It's parallel to '96 when Alex Rodriguez finished second to Juan Gonzalez. A-Rod would have won if the two Seattle writers had voted for him, but they both picked Ken Griffey Jr. Most of us watch from a distance, a vantage point from which it's difficult to make a pick if you only see a team 10 times a year. In the Giants games I covered this year, Ellis Burks looked like the MVP to me, so what do I know? I really went back and forth on who I thought the NL MVP should be. We did our own picks for ESPN and for all the player awards, and I only picked different from the writers once: I had Rick Ankiel over Rafael Furcal for the NL Rookie of the year -- please remember, this was before the postseason. But I never could decide who to pick for the NL MVP, because I could have made a case for anybody. If the voting would have taken place Sept. 1, there's no doubt Mike Piazza would have won. But as so often happens to catchers, he wore down in the last month of the season. Kent may be getting this award partially because of what he has done the last four years. The MVP is supposed to be based strictly on the year it's awarded, but a lot of writers may have been impressed by the fact that Kent has knocked in more runs over a four-year period than any second baseman in the history of the game despite the fact that he missed some games along the way.		ALSO SEE Kent tops Giants teammate Bonds for NL MVP