Everybody you named has MVP caliber numbers for very good teams (except Votto, who might be the best hitter of the  bunch, but he plays for the Reds).  I never said he was THE MVP, I said he was a legit MVP candidate--at least in part because of the unlikelihood of the numbers he's so far produced. By the way, if I had an MVP vote based on the numbers to date, I'd choose Zimmerman in the NL and Carlos Correia in the AL.