Ron: 5 Steve: 3 Beans: 4
But the season doesn't end today? What kind of wiggle room do these standings have?
National League:
The NL East is essentially set. Unless the Phillies or Braves have some kind of terrible losing streaks, they will be the NL East Champs and NL East Wild Card winners respectively.
After that the most distanced division is the NL Central with the Brewers up by 4.5 games. Even there, however, the St. Louis Cards are on a small win streak while the Reds are on a 3 game streak. They'll be meeting up with each other several more times so anything is possible there. I give the Edge to the Brewers in this case. Pujols isn't having the explosive season he was expected to. Brandon Phillips can't stay healthy. There are few one-two punches as powerful as Fielder-Braun in baseball and I think that is going to be the edge they need to make them the winner.
In the NL West, The D-backs have a 2 game lead over the Giants. Nothing would warm my heart more than Arizona succeeding and blocking San Francisco from making the playoffs. Nothing really stands out to me about Arizona while San Fran, on the other hand, stands out to me in a negative way. Losing Buster Posey was a huge blow to the Giants and they haven't really gotten the return from OF Carlos Beltran they thought they would. I think their run of success for this season is coming to an end.
American League:
The AL East is a close division race between the Red Sox and Yankees, same story different season. What makes this season interesting is that Sabathia is on his game like never before with 16 wins on the season, Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixerira are second and third respectively in AL home runs, and are joined by Cano being in the top 5 in RBIs. And yet, are 2-10 this season against the Red Sox. It is truly a tough division with the third place Rays having a record good enough to be a contender in almost any other division. The Red Sox have better pitching then the Yankees and are just north of evenly matched in almost any other area. But still the Yankees remain only a game back with two more series to go. This division could go in essentially only two directions.
The AL Central on the other hand is a far more up for grabs scenario with the Detroit Tigers leading it off. Their ace Justin Verlander leads the majors in wins and doesn't show any signs of slowing down. But other than Miguel Cabrera their isn't a lot of promise in their line up. The Indians are close behind (and if you don't already know my take on them you can read my article here). I personally feel they are the favorite. The White Sox however are only 4 games out of first place and have won 8 of their last 10. This is probably the most up for grabs division in baseball.
Then there is the AL West where it is pretty much just Texas trying to fend off the surging Angels long enough to keep them out of October. LA has had a great run with their pitchers Weaver, Haren, and Santana and are having a great second half of the season and maintaining a pennant chase scenario. The problem is The Rangers keep winning and had a great first half of the season too. I think the Rangers will take this one, but I won't be surprised if the Angels make this a fun one.
Im very excited for this post-season. Some divisions are going to be same old-same old (like any division ending in East) but others are going to interesting. It's all up for grabs creating some excitement when october comes around.
Really, the only thing we know for sure is that the Oakland Athletics won't be winning anything in the AL West.
However, I still stand by my decisions and I think they could make a (very surprising) run in the NL West.
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