The energy consumption of each node in the sensor network can be effectively balanced by using mobile sinks for data gathering, thus avoiding resulting in energy hole problem. This paper proposes a virtual grid margin optimization and energy balancing (VGMEB) protocol for mobile sinks to balance zthe energy consumption in wireless sensor networks. VGMEB achieves high energy efficiency by designing a virtual grid margin method and determining a novel evaluation model for cluster head selection. In addition, an approach in multiple attribute decision making based on relative entropy is integrated for determining the weight value of each metric. The experimental results show that VGMEB outperforms these protocols and it can efficiently mitigate the energy hole problem and prolong the network lifetime.