Simply put, how couldn’t he?

He has everything you want in a player, and plays one of the hardest defensive positions in the game. Even though he hadn’t played CF until he came up to the majors, he is still one of the best CFs in the game within 3 years.

He had the tools and he was able to develop them.

Watching Kemp last year, his work with Mattingly worked as Don preached patience. Don also told him to continue to be a line-drive hitter and the homeruns will come(instead of going to the plate trying to hit a HR) and it helped his overall stat line.

With all of this, he is just 25…

if he didnt have to play in DS in half his games..

Look at Carlos Beltran, who has never finished higher than fourth in MVP voting. Beltran is a much more valuable player than Kemp likely will be, in my opinion. Yet he hasn’t ever been a serious MVP contender.

You have to be really, really good to win an MVP. Or you have to get lucky and have a fantastic year that coincides with your team’s relevance. To me, Kemp just isn’t elite enough to fall into the camp of guys who are going to be considered for the award every year. Are 55% of people really banking on him having a well-timed and ridiculously productive peak year?

…who never win MVPs. Hall of Famers, even, who never win one. With one of the five greatest hitters ever (Pujols) still around in his prime, there are a lot of guys in the NL who are going to have great seasons and likely never win the award, whereas in a different decade, there might have been more to go around.

But even in the absence of a dominating player like that, it’s true that so much depends on having the right personal season coincide with the right team season. Given that, I’d say it’s more likely that Kemp finishes with 5 top-10 MVP voting seasons than it is that he actually wins one outright. I think he’s a great player for the next 5-10 years, but you can be that without ever being recognized as “the best.”

He could be one of the top five players in baseball for the next eight years, but still have someone like Pujols, Hanley, or The Justin Upton be better every year, let alone the guys who get upped by voters every year despite not being the best.