6 Darkhorse MVP Candidates After the First Half

With one half of baseball in the books and another half to go, there's still a whole lot of ballgame left before any team or individual honors are officially handed out. But that doesn't mean there aren't a handful of frontrunners.

And when talking about the MVP races in either league, there are a few names dominating the respective narratives at the moment.

In the American League, it's basically Aaron Judge and everyone else, which makes sense after the kind of first half he just had. Other players who are lagging behind him -- not by all that much, though -- include last year's winner, Mookie Betts, and a trio of Houston Astros in Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve, and George Springer. The race for National League MVP is a little more wide open, with Paul Goldschmidt, Joey Votto, and Nolan Arenado are making solid cases to be considered for such an honor.

But who could potentially come out of nowhere and contend for the award with a huge second half? We used recent odds to help identify six darkhorse candidates that could have a shot at breaking through those narratives.