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The Chicago Cubs (86-47) and Washington Nationals (78-55) are near-locks to become the first two National League teams to clinch playoff berths as big division leaders. The Cubs and Nationals are also the two favorites on the odds to win the World Series at +300 (bet $100 to win $300) and +550, respectively, at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark.

Chicago leads the NL Central by 15.5 games over last year’s division winner—the St. Louis Cardinals (70-62)—who are left to chase one of the wild-card berths instead. Meanwhile, Washington has a 9.5-game lead on the New York Mets (69-65), the defending NL champions who swept the Cubs in the NL Championship Series last year.

While the Cardinals (+2800) and Mets (+5000) are both long shots to win the World Series, the best race in the NL is in the West, where the Los Angeles Dodgers (+1000) and San Francisco Giants (+1400) are duking it out for the division title.

The Dodgers (74-59) are holding on to a slim two-game lead over the Giants (72-61), their bitter rivals who have won the World Series in the last three even-numbered years.

Los Angeles might be a good value bet now, as ace Clayton Kershaw (11-2, 1.79 ERA) is still hoping to return for the playoffs after sitting out since late June because of a back injury. The three-time NL Cy Young Award winner and 2014 NL MVP could be the key to the postseason because good pitching seems to be the only way to stop Chicago this year.

The American League also features a few top contenders on the 2016 World Series odds, led by the AL West-leading Texas Rangers (80-54) at +650. Because the AL beat the NL 4-2 in the MLB All-Star Game on July 12, the team winning the pennant from that league will have home-field advantage in the World Series.

The Kansas City Royals (69-64) used that edge to defeat the Mets in the World Series a year ago, and they are among the AL teams chasing a wild-card spot with a price of +3300 to repeat as champs.

The Royals are three games behind the Detroit Tigers (72-61) and trail the AL Central-leading Cleveland Indians (76-56) by 7.5 in the race for the division title. The Indians are +900 to win the World Series, while the Tigers are +2200.

In the AL East, three teams are battling to win the division, as the Toronto Blue Jays (76-57) lead by two games over the Boston Red Sox (74-59) and four over the Baltimore Orioles (72-61). The Blue Jays fell to Kansas City in the 2015 ALCS, and they are +750 to win the World Series ahead of the Red Sox (+1000) and Orioles (+2500).

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The final month of the 2016 MLB season has arrived, but there is still a lot to be sorted out before the regular season wraps up and another postseason begins.

As many as 18 teams can still be considered contenders for at least a wild-card berth. As for individual accolades, September performances will decide several major awards.

With that in mind, some of the top MLB writers at Bleacher Report have decided to try their hands at predicting the league’s 10 playoff teams, major award winners and a few other notable things.

These six writers made up our panel of prognosticators:

• Seth Gruen, National MLB Columnist
• Danny Knobler, MLB Lead Writer
• Joel Reuter, National MLB Columnist
• Zachary Rymer, MLB Lead Writer
• Jacob Shafer, National MLB Columnist
• Rick Weiner, National MLB Columnist

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If nothing else, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has been controversial since he became the 10th man to hold baseball’s top spot in January 2015.

He has made “pace of play” his cause celebre, an issue he believes is one of game’s biggest burdens. But in addressing it, Manfred has proposed radical changes that would be to the detriment of the issue at hand.

The use of a 20-second pitch clock, instituting reliever limits and a reduction in defensive shifting are all being considered by MLB’s top minds.

“I think you could make an argument that more relievers have lengthened the game,” Manfred told USA Today‘s Bob Nightengale. “More pitching changes has slowed down the pace of the game and the unbelievable effectiveness of some of those relief pitchers has robbed some of the action from the game.”

Essentially, the commissioner is asking: How can we create more offense yet shorten games? He’s looking for a silver bullet.

There isn’t one.

Manfred needs to give consideration to baseball’s biggest conundrum: Unlike other sports where offense sells tickets, it lengthens a baseball game.

More runs mean longer innings. Longer innings mean a longer game. It’s as simple as first-grade arithmetic. And it’s important to note that runs per game are at their highest since 2009.

The downside of each of the three aforementioned changes is they limit a team’s run-preventing capabilities. That could result in more offense. So much more offense that it could counteract—or even outweigh—any efforts to reduce the length of games.

The NFL instituted the two-point conversion and rules to protect its quarterbacks. The NBA has added the three-point line, shot clock and eliminated hand checking.

Each of those rule changes was put in place to promote offense. But football and basketball have game clocks. So even in cases where scoring calls for a stoppage in the clock, an increase in offense doesn’t have nearly as drastic an effect as it does in baseball.

Essentially, the absence of a game clock allows for an unlimited amount of offense. On Aug. 22, the Los Angeles Dodgers scored 18 runs against the Cincinnati Reds in a nine-inning contest that lasted four hours, two minutes.

A 20-second pitch clock might limit a pitcher’s ability to go through an entire set of signs with his catcher. That could force him to throw a pitch he doesn’t want to throw. The clock could also cause a pitcher to rush and hang a breaking ball up in the zone.

This could all result in more offense. We just don’t know to what degree.

Pitching changes and shifting take time. They are also favorable defensively. So, in theory, limiting the use of both reduces pace of play yet also promotes offense.

But given the relationship between offense and game time in baseball, there’s a sweet spot.

Major league pitchers have never been put on a clock, nor have managers been limited as to the use of their bullpens. So we have no statistical data that suggests how much more offense it may create.

There has been some experimentation with a pitch clock and data does suggest that it may shorten games, per this piece by Sam Dykstra of MiLB.com.

But countless times we have seen a pitcher struggle. No pitcher has his best stuff every outing.

If a team is out of pitching changes and a reliever is struggling to get outs, he could be stranded. There’s no telling how long an inning could go on under those circumstances. 

That same Dodgers-Reds game is a perfect example. Cincinnati pulled starting pitcher Homer Bailey after he allowed six runs on nine hits in 2.1 innings of work. If there were limits on relief pitchers, the Reds might have had to leave Bailey out there.

And how many more runs would Los Angeles have scored? How much longer would that game have gone on? These rule changes set baseball on a slippery slope. It’s unclear if there’s a plateau, making it too risky. 

Manfred has to consider that he may not be able to fix all of the game’s problems with one swing of the bat. It will more likely take targeted changes that have a more certain outcome. Sometimes it’s best to string base hits together in an effort to score a run.

Try hitting for power and you risk striking out. On these issues, Manfred cannot afford to swing and miss.

Seth Gruen is a national baseball columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @SethGruen.

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First, let’s get this out of the way: Tim Tebow didn’t make this installment of Bleacher Report’s MLB Team of the Week.

In fact, according to B/R’s Scott Miller—who attended Tebow’s recent, much-hyped baseball showcase—the former NFL quarterback isn’t likely to make an MLB team of any kind anytime soon.

Instead, we’ve got 10 guys—one per position, including a designated hitter and starting pitcher—who blew up box scores over the past seven days.

To qualify, a player needs at least two starts at the position in question or at least one start in the case of pitchers. It’s primarily about individual achievement, but we award bonus points for gaudy numbers that translated to ticks in the win column.

Tebow if you must, and then step into the box and proceed when ready.

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When the injury bug ambushed and carried off Giancarlo Stanton in mid-August, the Miami Marlins lost a power source that still hasn’t been replaced.

But give it up to Christian Yelich for giving it his best shot.

The slender left fielder isn’t known for his power, but he’s changing that more and more with each day. He clubbed seven home runs in August, or as many as he hit in 2015. And on the first day of September, one of his three hits in a 6-4 win over the New York Mets was a three-run job that just cleared the left field fence at Citi Field.

That was Yelich’s third home run in as many days, and he is now hitting .310 with 18 dingers. His previous career high was nine. According to math, he’s doubled that. According to logic, that’s good.

Yelich’s latest helped the Marlins snap a five-game losing streak and climb to within three games of the National League‘s second wild-card spot. But while that’s worthy of lip service, the Marlins’ postseason chances are teetering on the edge of not even being worthy of discussion. They’re 11-18 since August 1 and aren’t in good shape for the stretch run.

But if they ultimately take anything away from a disappointing finish to 2016, it could be that they got to watch Yelich begin his transition from underrated star to legitimate superstar.

We’ve known for years that Yelich can rake. He was a .311 hitter in the minors and a .290 hitter in the majors heading into 2016. He also ran the bases well and played Gold Glove-caliber defense, earning WAR’s approval despite the fact he had just 20 career homers at the end of 2015. You could rub your palms together and say, “If only he had some power…”

That didn’t seem likely to come true, however. As MLB.com’s Andrew Simon illustrated, Yelich was established as a unique (read: “pretty darn weird”) hitter by last season:

Hard contact is, indeed, a good thing, and 2015 was just the latest year in which Yelich made plenty of it. He didn’t even have his highest hard-hit rate, yet he still managed to land in the top 25 in Baseball Savant’s average exit velocity leaderboard at 92.0 miles per hour.

But hard contact alone does not power make. Launch angle is another key ingredient. The higher the launch angle, the more balls in the air, and the more balls to find the gaps or go over the fence. Yelich’s average launch angle in 2015 was 0.7 degrees, pretty close to zero and my making a lame crack about his not even having a launch angle.

Yelich’s aversion to launch angle before 2016 created the highest ratio of ground balls to fly balls of any hitter in the majors. As a sort of bonus, he also had one of the lowest pull rates of any hitter.

The CliffsNotes: Yelich was showing he could barrel the ball well enough to hit for power, but his entire approach was about as far removed from a power hitter’s as you could imagine. 

Obviously, things have changed in 2016. According to the man himself, the adjustment he’s made in working with Marlins hitting coaches Frank Menechino and Barry Bonds (himself a fairly accomplished power hitter) has been a mental one.

“We worked on some stuff in [the cage], I liked it and got a feel for it,” the 24-year-old told Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. “The stance and the mechanics are the same. I’ve kept the same approach. It was more of a thought process that helped.”

Mental adjustments are more difficult to turn into hard evidence, but a few things stand out.

Thing 1: Yelich is getting under more balls, posting an average launch angle of 2.0 degrees that’s led to the lowest ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio of his career.

Thing 2: He’s been pulling the ball more, entering Thursday with a career-high 35.1 pull percentage. 

Thing 3: Yelich hasn’t needed his newfound pull habit to hit for power, slugging .417 on pitches on and off the outside edge of the strike zone. He had never done better than .320 before. Not surprisingly, the key has been driving the ball to left field.

In addition to trying new things, Yelich has made his quietly good raw power downright elite. He’s averaging 96.8 mph on his fly balls and line drives. That’s 0.1 mph south of Miguel Cabrera, who is literally Miguel Cabrera.

Apologies for the ongoing number barrage, but the last one we need to look at is one that relates back to that half-baked thought about what Yelich could be with more power. Per Baseball-Reference.com’s WAR, it turns out Yelich with power is arguably the best left fielder in baseball:

1. Christian Yelich: 4.8
2. Starling Marte: 4.5
3. Ryan Braun: 3.9

It makes sense. Left field isn’t a big superstar position. And considering that he can now run, field, hit and hit for power, Yelich is making a darn strong case to be called a superstar.

It’s probably too late for this to mean anything for a Marlins team that has too little. But Yelich isn’t going anywhere, and Miami is entitled to the warm thought that this is just the beginning.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant unless otherwise noted/linked.

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After spending a month in Triple-A, Yasiel Puig has returned to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times first broke the news on Thursday, which the Dodgers confirmed on Friday. Puig was placed in the starting lineup, will bat fifth and play right field against the San Diego Padres.

Los Angeles sent the outfielder down to Triple-A at the start of August after a poor first four months of the season. He responded by hitting .348 with four home runs in 19 games for the Oklahoma City Dodgers.

Of course, his play on the field wasn’t the only reason for the demotion.

Per McCullough, Puig showed up late to meetings and was inconsistent with his work habits, and manager Dave Roberts wanted the 25-year-old to “be a better person and baseball player.”

The first couple of weeks in the Pacific Coast League didn’t seem to change his attitude, as he posted partying videos on Snapchat.

However, he appeared to have a change of heart in recent days. He told ESPN.com’s Marly Rivera that playing in the minors taught him humility and added his thoughts on his improved attitude:

I keep hitting. I’m behaving. I’m doing the work I have to do. What I did wrong before and I have been doing better the last two or three weeks that I’ve been here. [Being called up] does not depend on me. All I can do is try to improve what I did wrong, the things that got me sent me here. The rest does not depend on me, that’s [a decision for] the GM, the president. Only God knows where I will end up.

“Yasiel has done everything we asked of him,” Roberts said, per MLB Network Radio. “We felt ultimately that he makes us better, that was the deciding factor.” 

Roberts also noted he and team president Andrew Friedman brought veteran players in to discuss the move with them, per MLB Network Radio. 

The Dodgers were reportedly still undecided about Puig’s fate earlier in the week, per Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times. They then placed him on waivers, where he was claimed by a team before the Dodgers decided to bring him back to the big league roster, per Today’s Knuckleball (h/t ESPN.com).

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports explained L.A. can still trade him in the winter:

Until then, he will likely be a part of the Dodgers and could play an important role down the stretch. With the squad involved in a tight division race with the San Francisco Giants in the NL West, L.A. will hope Puig not only plays well but also avoids being a distraction in the clubhouse.

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The Kansas City Royals (69-64) had won 11 straight games Danny Duffy (11-2, 3.01 ERA) started until he got hammered by the Boston Red Sox in his last outing Saturday.

Now the Royals will try to avoid losing two straight with Duffy on the hill when they host the Detroit Tigers (72-61) as -165 home betting favorites (bet $165 to win $100) at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark in a key American League Central matchup starting Friday.

Duffy surrendered seven runs and nine hits—including three homers—to the Red Sox in five innings of an 8-3 loss in his most recent start. He had given up more than three runs only once in his previous 16 starts before that and saw his ERA rise from 2.66.

But Duffy has yet to suffer a setback at home this season, going a perfect 6-0 with a 3.16 ERA in 18 appearances at Kauffman Stadium, including 11 starts.

The Tigers are three games ahead of Kansas City in the AL Central standings and trail the division-leading Cleveland Indians by 4.5 games heading into the final month of the season. Detroit is coming off a three-game sweep of the Chicago White Sox and sends the struggling Anibal Sanchez (7-13, 5.92 ERA) to the mound. He’s going for just his second win since August 2.

Sanchez last won on the road against the Minnesota Twins on August 23, allowing three runs and six hits in seven innings of an 8-3 victory. However, he followed that up by giving up five runs and eight hits in 5.2 innings of a 5-0 home loss Sunday.

The Royals have dominated the season series this year, winning nine of 13 meetings so far, including three straight and seven of the past nine. Most of the games have been low-scoring affairs recently, according to the Odds Shark MLB Database, with the under going 5-1-1 in the previous seven games between the teams. Before that, the over was on an 11-2 run dating back to August 2015.

The Tigers were just swept at home by Kansas City in a three-game series August 15-17, getting outscored by a 13-3 margin.

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Fact: Los Angeles Angels pitcher Ricky Nolasco threw a complete-game shutout against the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday. The Angels join the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and Cleveland Indians as the only teams to have thrown at least three complete-game shutouts this season. 

Bleacher Report will be bringing sports fans the most interesting and engaging Cold Hard Fact of the day, presented by Coors Light.

Source: B/R Insights

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Lavishing Zack Greinke with a six-year, $206.5 million contract hasn’t turned the Arizona Diamondbacks into contenders. But if they ever want to get out from under that contract, they’ll reportedly be able to find a suitor within their own division.

Continue for updates.

Dodgers Want Greinke Reunion

Thursday, Sept. 1

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported the Los Angeles Dodgers contacted the Diamondbacks regarding a trade for their former ace prior to Wednesday’s waiver trade deadline. Per Rosenthal, the talks were not substantive, and it’s unclear if Arizona has any intention of moving Greinke.

The 32-year-old righty played for the Dodgers from 2013 to 2015. He posted an ERA under 3.00 in each season, including a 1.66 rate during his historic 2015 campaign.

The Diamondbacks poached him away last December, but the first year hasn’t worked out. (He has a 4.17 ERA and 1.24 WHIP through his first 22 starts.) Arizona is 56-77 and could be looking at organizational upheaval.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported ownership is considering replacing chief baseball officer Tony La Russa; general manager Dave Stewart; and De Jon Watson, the team’s senior vice president of baseball operations, after two seasons. Arizona brought in La Russa to spearhead an organizational shuffling, seemingly giving him a blank check and an edict to make the team competitive.

The club showed promise with a 79-83 campaign a year ago, but 2016 has been a mess. Greinke is on pace for his lowest wins above replacement since 2007, per FanGraphs, and has seen all his peripherals pale in comparison to his stint in L.A.

The Dodgers have been tighter with their spending than they were when their current ownership group first came aboard, but they’re tied for 26th in quality starts. Their willingness to kick the tires on Greinke is understandable, even with his monstrous contract.

It would also protect the organization if injured starter Clayton Kershaw attempted to join the free-agent market after the 2018 season, as his current deal has an opt-out clause.

Follow Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) on Twitter.

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Baseball fans who remember last winter’s free-agent frenzy should hold on to those memories, for the upcoming crop of unsigned talent is shaping up to be one of the weakest in recent memory, especially when it comes to starting pitching.

That’s why many, including Bleacher Report’s Jacob Shafer, believe that the trade market could be the driving force behind much of the coming offseason’s most notable, game-changing moves.

With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of the top players, both free agents and potential trade candidates, who could be wearing a different uniform come Opening Day 2017—and predicted their fate. 

Of course, with two months to go before the offseason begins, much can—and probably will—change. Not only could our list of players look drastically different the next time we revisit those who could be on the move, but their ultimate destinations could change as well.

How drastically things will change is a question that can’t be answered, at least not yet. But we’ve got answers to other queries, such as whether Wilson Ramos will re-sign with Washington before testing the open market and whether Chris Sale is a lock to be traded by the Chicago White Sox.

Read on to get the answers.

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