This is one of the few pieces in this 2012 Season Preview that I’m going to truly enjoy penning.

How could I not find joy in recapping one of the greatest seasons in franchise history, one of the handful of players on the Los Angeles Dodgers who has a ton of promise, and the man who should have won the 2011 NL MVP Award?

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Following a down 2010, many sought to have Matt Kemp shipped out of Los Angeles. Accusations of laziness, an inability to mentally comprehend the game, and caring more about a personal relationship than his on-the-field performance, plagued the Dodger center fielder. Heading into what was a make-or-break year in 2011, few stood behind Matty – mostly Dodger bloggers who skew analytical – and I’m proud to say I was one of those believers in The Bison.

You simply don’t give up on a 26-year-old who hits for power, can run the bases, and has a rocket arm, particularly at a time when his value was at its absolute lowest (and his luck on balls in play was the worst it had ever been, with a .295 BABIP that was well below his career .352 BABIP).

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Kemp backed up his supporters’ beliefs and proved all of the doubters wrong with a season that had him atop both the fWAR (8.7 – NL leader, 2nd in MLB) and rWAR (10.0 – MLB leader) leaderboards. Kemp mashed to the tune of a .324/.399/.586/.985 slash line with 39 long balls, 76 extra-base hits, 40 stolen bases in 51 attempts, a 171 wRC+, and a phenomenal .419 wOBA.

Perhaps most importantly, Matt showed refinement in the areas of his game that most affected the productivity of his 2010 campaign. He reduced his whiffs from 25.4% to 23.1% while simultaneously keeping his unintentional walk rate steady (7.3%/7.3%). Both his raw total of free passes and his walk rate increased (53 to 74 and 7.9% to 10.7%) due to 24 intentionally-awarded trips to first base. While many would discount this as simply a product of a horrid lineup around him, Matt’s dominant offensive season and ability to go yard in any situation also led to more four-ball, no-strike walks.

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The lineup around Kemp is yet another reason to praise him for the season-long Beast Mode that earned him the NL Hank Aaron Award as the top performer in the Senior Circuit. Matt crushed both lefties and righties (.341/.461/.682/1.143 & .319/.380/.560/.940, respectively), increased the amount of line drives he hit (20% to 23.2%), and continued to not make weak contact, as he popped up to an infielder only 2.2 percent of the time. All of this occurred with guys like Juan Uribe and James Loney providing “protection”.

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Defensive metrics over one season shouldn’t be taken as a picture of the player’s complete defensive skill set, and I’ll never be convinced that Matt’s 2010 season actually yielded a -27.5 UZR/150, but 2011 did see an improvement in fielding numbers, as he totaled a -4.7 UZR/150. With some conflicting numbers on defense (an average of a -9.5 UZR/150 over the last three seasons, including the one atrocious year), I believe that we can all agree on the basis of Matt’s glove work is this: he has a tremendous arm, great speed, and can run down a lot of balls despite the occasional bad route.

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As it stands, his 2010 season appears to be the outlier both defensively and overall, as he has produced two 5+ WAR seasons with the one down year in-between, as well as a pretty good 2008 season as a 23-year-old.

Questions regarding Kemp’s aptitude and intelligence were misguided from the start, and frankly were intellectually lazy as well, bordering on TMZ-ish analysis. These ideas ignored the numbers, which clearly pointed to where Matt’s game had fallen off between 2009 and 2010, and his 2011 performance cemented that he was more than just a big bag of tools.

Spring Training is here, which means all other sports matter less, and wow, there’s way too much news out of the Los Angeles Dodgers camp already.

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Ken Gurnick of MLB.com reports that Clayton Kershaw will start on Opening Day, which is basically the biggest Captain Obvious moment of the season.

Then Matt Kemp told the media that he doesn’t want the 2011 NL MVP Award if Ryan Braun is suspended.

“I would want to win by them voting me,” Kemp said. “I wouldn’t want them to just, ‘Oh, this person did that so how about we just give the award to this person?’ I don’t think it should work that way.

“If it is that way, then it should be a vacant award for 2011, no one should win the MVP award in the National League.”

Kemp said he hopes Braun is vindicated.

“I know Braun,” he said. “We’ve always been cool. We’ve been friends. He’s been one of my favorite players in the big leagues. I hope it’s not true.”

Kemp has handled this situation extremely well up to this point and that just cements it.

It wasn’t all rainbows and kittens though, as Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times reported that Blake Hawksworth won’t be ready to start the season because a second operation was necessary to clean up his elbow.

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As far as roles and playing time go, Eric Stephen of True Blue LA has a ton of news.

“Javy, to me, didn’t do anything last year to say he shouldn’t be that guy,” manager Don Mattingly said on Tuesday. “More than anything, Kenley was saying ‘Hey I can do that too’ by the way he pitched. It’s a good problem for us to have.”

“Javy has been here one year,” said Mattingly. “It’s a competition, you still have to perform. There have been a lot of guys in their first year were really good and struggled the next year. Kenley was a perfect example, as he wasn’t himself [to start 2011] that he was the year before. It took him a half a season with little problems here and there, and he was in the minors for a little bit, but next thing you know he emerged back to what we had seen the year before.”

Javy Guerra will be the closer over Kenley Jansen to start the season, and while Jansen is the better pitcher, I don’t have a problem with this, as it gives the team better flexibility in regards to Jansen’s usage.

“It’s not like he’s a bad guy, or you don’t like him. But to this point he’s been tough to count on,” Mattingly said of relief pitcher Ronald Belisario, who is here in camp, but was not available for reporters as he left for a dental appointment. “It’s a step in the right direction that he’s here.”

The much maligned Ronald Belisario was actually there in person in real life at Spring Training and it’s important because if he looks anything like his old self, Hawksworth’s injury might have just opened up a spot.

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In the world of position players, both starting and backup roles are at stake.

Jerry Sands doesn’t necessarily need to win an everyday spot in the lineup to make the opening day roster, but Mattingly said he needs to have a certain number of plate appearances to justify a spot on the big league roster, as the club wants Sands to play nearly every day. While Mattingly shied away from committing to a plan of sitting Andre Ethier and Loney against southpaws, the manager said that figuring out a way to get Sands enough at-bats will be one of his projects in camp.

I have a way to get Jerry Sands at bats: don’t play Juan Rivera.

The backup shortstop will be Jerry Hairston Jr., as Mattingly wants to keep Juan Uribe at third base. Should Dee Gordon go down for any extended period of time, the club would turn to Justin Sellers.

Jerry Hairston Jr. is a fine utility infielder, but that paragraph makes me want to barf. Juan Uribe at third all the time and Justin Sellers is the backup in case Dee Gordon doesn’t take off like they expect.

Could be bad.

Finally, it was announced that Gordon will hit first, while Kemp hits third.

I’ll explore this later, but this could be a bad idea. Gordon got better later in the season, but it was a tiny sample size, and as a whole, he has always struggled at taking a walk. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, putting your best hitter in the three hole is not optimal either.

Matt Kemp finished second to Ryan Braun in the 2011 NL MVP Award voting that was revealed by the BBWAA today.

Obviously, I disagree, and I stated my reasoning back in September, but the way the voting played out basically showed why he lost.

As you can see, Roy Halladay finished in ninth with Clayton Kershaw in twelfth, this despite Kershaw actually winning the 2011 NL Cy Young Award.

So the logic of most voters was that since Matt Kemp’s teammates sucked, he didn’t deserve the 2011 NL MVP Award.

Sweet, right?

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Anyway, with Matt Kemp signing his 8 year/160 million dollar extension last week, the 2011 NL MVP Award second place finisher will be in a Dodgers uniform for a while, hopefully giving him ample opportunity to add to his trophy case.