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The Detroit Tigers have all but relegated themselves to playing next season without last season’s ace, Max Scherzer. 

In fact, they pretty much did so in March when Scherzer turned down a six-year, $144 million extension offer. Once that happened, general manager Dave Dombrowski was pretty much free to start allocating the extra savings elsewhere.

Now here the Tigers are, eight months later. Scherzer’s free-agent market has not developed a month into the offseason, which was expected, and the Tigers have all but discounted him as an option for next season.

“Back then only we could have signed him,” Dombrowski said at the GM meetings earlier this month via Joel Sherman of the New York Post. “Now, 29 other teams could sign him. As you see, the odds don’t improve.”

Dombrowski must now figure out how to dole out the money the Tigers will save assuming they lose Scherzer along with right fielder Torii Hunter. Just based on last season’s salaries, that is a savings of nearly $30 million for 2015 between those players, and the Tigers have needs.

They can do without re-signing Scherzer or someone comparable like Jon Lester, which is why they are not in the rumor mix for either guy. David Price, Justin Verlander, Anibal Sanchez and Rick Porcello make up the rotation for next season. Whoever the Tigers stick in the fifth spot will round out a formidable fivesome that is still good enough to compete for the American League Central title.

This is of course assuming the Tigers have no desire to trade Price or Porcello, who each have one year remaining before they can become free agents and possibly walk away from the Tigers as Scherzer is expected to do. Knowing the Tigers are in danger of losing those guys for nothing but a compensation draft pick, the Miami Marlins and Boston Red Sox have poked around about acquiring one or both of those pitchers. Even Sanchez has been a topic of conversation.

Trading from that pile would leave the Tigers searching for pitching, but as of now they don’t have a pressing need there. Most of the team’s immediate uncertainty is in the bullpen. That unit was among the worst in the majors—27th in ERA (4.29)—and closer Joe Nathan was second in the league with seven blown saves.

Regardless of last season’s ugliness, Dombrowski has said he is comfortable with his reliever situation. Part of the reason is because the Tigers picked up Joakim Soria’s $7 million option after trading for him during last season, and they expect to have Bruce Rondon ready for spring training after he missed last season because of Tommy John surgery.

Even still, the bullpen can’t be called reliable until it performs as such, and with the money the team is saving on Scherzer, adding a quality, dominant free-agent reliever like Andrew Miller seems like the easy play. Miller, who was drafted by the Tigers in the first round in 2006, had a 2.02 ERA and 0.802 WHIP in 62.1 relief innings last season between the Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles. The Tigers even witnessed his dominance firsthand in October when Miller pitched 3.1 scoreless innings against them in the American League Division Series.

However, the Tigers seem to have zero interest in Miller. While the bullpen needs more help than just one arm, if Dombrowski truly is comfortable with his current guys, adding someone like Miller should make him ecstatic. This is a guy capable of pitching in any inning, including the ninth, and averaged 14.9 strikeouts per nine innings while pitching better than his ERA (1.51 FIP).

Those numbers could push Miller’s average annual value beyond $10 million. But even with that money, the Tigers have their infield, catcher and one of their outfield positions locked in, so splurging in the bullpen seems reasonable.

“I think he’s the perfect fit for the Tigers,” Sports Illustrated baseball writer Tom Verducci said on MLB Network on Monday.

Alas, the Tigers are likely to pass on Miller. If they find themselves in another bullpen mess come next July, they could be greatly regretting that decision.

Seeing reports that #Tigers are out on Andrew Miller. Can’t wait until they decide to trade prospects for him in July.

— Dan Hasty (@DanHasty34) November 25, 2014

The Tigers have this money, but how they will spend it seems to be a mystery. What is known is they are in a win-now mode and watching their window to contend for a World Series close as they rely on aging stars. So hoarding the money won’t do them any good, especially since they already chucked $68 million at Victor Martinez this offseason.

The Kansas City Royals are now a legitimate threat to the top of the division, and if the Tigers can’t find a way to effectively allocate the money they are saving on Scherzer, the Tigers could lose that crown for the first time in five years.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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The second the Los Angeles Dodgers hired Andrew Friedman as their president of baseball operations and jettisoned former general manager Ned Colletti into a role untied to player personnel, the team was without a shortstop for 2015. 

The new front-office regime wanted nothing to do with Hanley Ramirez, the team’s full-time shortstop the previous two seasons, and allowed him to walk in free agency. While it wasn’t probable that Colletti would have pursued Ramirez as a shortstop, it certainly wasn’t out of the question.

What is certain as of now is that Ramirez is with the Boston Red Sox, and the Dodgers are without a shortstop they are comfortable with going into next spring. The in-house options are steady defensively but have nowhere close to the offense Ramirez provided, which means if the Dodgers want more than a glove at the position, they will have to explore trade options.

The top target is Chicago White Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today Sports.

The #Dodgers are aggressively pursuing #Whitesox shortstop Alexei Ramirez in trade talks.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) November 18, 2014

Corey Seager is a shortstop and one of the Dodgers’ top prospects. Between Single-A Rancho Cucamonga and Double-A Chattanooga, Seager hit a gaudy .349/.402/.602 with a 1.004 OPS and was deemed one of the team’s untouchables in trade talks last July. But Seager is 20 and won’t be ready for the big leagues for at least one more season, and that is assuming he will stay at shortstop. He is 6’4″, and while the front office is going to allow him to play the position for now, that’s no promise he will stick there long term.

Until Seager is ready, the Dodgers have to fill the need. Ramirez would fit the role nicely.

Ramirez is 33 years old and an average hitter with medium pop—.273/.305/.408 with a .713 OPS, 15 home runs and a 101 OPS-plus—and while he isn’t an elite defender, he would be an upgrade from Hanley Ramirez. Also appealing is that Alexei Ramirez has played 158 games in each of the previous four seasons, a long way from Hanley Ramirez’s seemingly day-to-day availability.

Alexei Ramirez is owed $10 million next season and has a $10 million club option for 2016 with a $1 million buyout. That means his deal would be up right around the time the Dodgers would be ready to bring up Seager.

The monetary price is not an issue for the flush Dodger organization, but the price in players is high. Aside from winning at the major league level, one of the Dodgers’ stated goals is to replenish the farm system so they don’t have to rely on gargantuan payrolls year after year.

The White Sox are said to not be shopping Ramirez, but they are willing to listen to offers. The catch is that any trade involving Ramirez is going to call for some high-end prospects in return.

Rival evaluators say the White Sox asking price on Alexei Ramirez is steep, to the degree that you’d want to be buying in for 2-3 years.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 21, 2014

Part of the reason for the high price is that the White Sox are not actively shopping Ramirez, and trading him would put them in a similar bind as the Dodgers. If they move Ramirez, the White Sox would then immediately be in the market for a shortstop since their top prospect at the position, Tim Anderson, is still at least two years away from the majors.

The only way the White Sox would want to put themselves in that market is if they got a strong return for Ramirez.

“We are certainly open minded on all of our players,” White Sox general manager Rick Hahn told Doug Padilla of ESPNChicago.com without addressing Ramirez specifically. “It’s our obligation to listen. At the same time we have what feel are some very valuable commodities in the game right now and we’re certainly not looking to move any of them without feeling very good that we are not only improving our competitiveness for 2015 but for ’16 and beyond as well.”

While the fit is perfect for the Dodgers as they wait for Seager, trading for Ramirez at that price is unlikely. For the White Sox, moving Ramirez for anything less is pointless. Plus, he is relatively inexpensive, making him appealing to both teams.

That leaves the teams at a stalemate. For now. Friedman and Hahn have a good working relationship, and they may exhaust every avenue to make a deal work before the end of the winter.

It just doesn’t make a lot of sense for either team to pull the trigger at this point.

That means the Dodgers could fish in the free-agent pond and come out with a one- or two-year deal for Jed Lowrie or Stephen Drew. They could also explore different trade opportunities as the Philadelphia Phillies are willing to deal Jimmy Rollins. Rollins has 10-and-5 rights, though, and can veto any trade because he has 10 years in the majors and five with the same team.

Aside from the Dodgers needing to make a trade in their outfield, their shortstop situation is the top priority this offseason. More than likely they will wait out the markets and hope for prices to drop on short-term options. If they don’t and the free-agent pool doesn’t work for them, one of their own guys—Erisbel Arruebarrena, Miguel Rojas and/or Justin Turner—will have to fill the hole.

Until then, the Dodgers will leave the “HELP WANTED” sign on the window and make moves elsewhere.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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Four Decembers ago, Dayton Moore and Doug Melvin locked horns, both men in charge of major league rosters desperate to win immediately or immediately thereafter.

Moore, the general manager of the Kansas City Royals, and Melvin, the GM of the Milwaukee Brewers, pitched each other back and forth on how to send Zack Greinke to Milwaukee. The Brewers, a team on the cusp, needed Greinke to make them a legitimate playoff contender in 2011. The Royals, a team going nowhere, had no use for Greinke and needed young major league talent in return.

Greinke was the main piece of the deal, and shortstop Alcides Escobar the big return piece for the Royals, but Lorenzo Cain was one of the sticking points for Moore. He wanted him included, and while Melvin was hesitant, Greinke’s impact was too great to hold out—and the Brewers’ GM eventually included Cain, among others, with Escobar.

Almost four years later, the baseball universe now knows why Moore insisted on Cain’s inclusion. Cain, a versatile outfielder, is a key reason the Royals are up 2-0 on the Baltimore Orioles after Saturday’s 6-4 win in Game 2 of the American League Championship Series, two wins away from the World Series.

“That [trade] was the start of putting together a championship baseball team,” manager Ned Yost said in his postgame press conference. “That’s where it started, with that Greinke trade.”

Cain is 6-for-8 in the ALCS—he went 4-for-5 with an RBI and two runs in Game 2—and 10-for-27 (.370) in his first six postseason games. He has also played stellar defense, adding to his highlight reel with two fantastic catches Saturday, including one that he seemed to run a marathon to reach in the right-center gap and another in the seventh to end the inning with two runners in scoring position in a tied game.

“I’m just trying to do the best I can to be a playmaker behind [the pitchers],” Cain told the TBS broadcast after the game. “I felt like I was in right field [on that one].”

Not saying Lorenzo Cain has range, but he also has two TD catches on CBS and an interception on ESPN2.

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) October 11, 2014

Cain’s four hits in Game 2 also tied a franchise record for most in a single playoff game. George Brett did it twice.

“I want to be an all-around player, swing the bat and play solid defense and steal bags as well,” Cain told MLB Network after the game. “I still got work to do, I still got things to work on but I’m trying to improve each and every day and become a great ballplayer.”

Cain’s star has been budding since before the Greinke trade. The Brewers called him up midway through the 2010 season, and in 158 plate appearances, he hit .306/.348/.415 with 11 doubles and seven stolen bases. He also played wonderful defense in that short time, but the Brewers had traded for Carlos Gomez the year before and already had Ryan Braun and Corey Hart entrenched in the outfield.

They didn’t want to let Cain go, but he was expendable at the time.

“Lorenzo was really raw at that time,” said Yost, who managed the Brewers from 2003 to 2008 and saw plenty of Brewers prospects over that time. “But you could tell with his athleticism that he might turn into one heck of a player, and he sure has.”

This season was Cain’s breakout campaign. After struggling to find himself in three seasons with the Royals, Cain, who only found baseball after being cut from his high school basketball team, played himself into the regular lineup after the first month of the regular season, hitting .333/.364/.381, and proved he was worthy of staying in it during the next month with a .342/.400/.474 line and .874 OPS. Cain finished the season hitting .301/.339/.412 with a .751 OPS and 108 OPS-plus.

Defensively, Cain has been a wizard. He was second in the league with 24 defensive runs saved behind teammate Alex Gordon and second in ultimate zone rating, also behind Gordon. It can be argued that Gordon’s outstanding defensive season, which is no fluke, was aided by having Cain patrolling center field for more than 700 innings.

Those numbers are evidence that at 28 years old, Cain is finally fulfilling the potential the Brewers and Royals saw four years ago. And this postseason stage is the perfect setting for the baseball world to see the wannabe basketball player-turned-baseball stud become an October star.

“I’m really happy about it,” Yost said. “He had a great day today, four hits, made some great plays in the outfield, none bigger for me than that ball J.J. Hardy hit down the right-field line [in the seventh]. He came out of nowhere and caught it. I thought for sure that ball was going to drop when it first left the bat, and all of the sudden here he comes and makes the play.

“The country is seeing a very exciting player in Lorenzo Cain.”

All signs point to Cain continuing to be an impact player on both offense and defense for the rest of the series, and he is 4-for-12 lifetime (.333) against Game 3 starter Wei-Yin Chen. If this breakout run continues, it will make the Orioles’ road to a comeback much more difficult.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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LOS ANGELES — To think you know baseball is to be a stupid, stupid fool. 

No one understands this game, or why things happen how they happen, particularly when everyone expects exactly the opposite. That is why you watch in October. That is why jaws can routinely be picked up off the floor with a snow shovel in the autumn.

It is why the sport is beautiful, because the seemingly impossible can always trump perfectly sound reason.

It is why the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers left the baseball-watching world speechless and in disbelief Friday night at Dodger Stadium. This was an outcome nobody saw coming before Game 1 of the National League Division Series started, or even more than halfway through it.

In a game started by the two best pitchers in the league, the Cardinals won, 10-9. It wasn’t that the Cardinals won that was so stunning, but it was the way they got down and then came back, and the fact that Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainwright combined to give up 14 runs, every single one of them as earned as earned can be.

Simply stated, this game was shocking, and if the rest of the series is anything close to this, predictions be damned. This is going to be wild.

“That’s baseball. Anything can happen,” Dodgers right fielder Matt Kemp said after the game, attempting to brush aside the fact that this game was ridiculously nuts.

Kemp then paused for a few seconds before offering some candidness.

“Maybe I was a little shocked.”

The part that was so crazy was that the starting pitchers came in as the best the NL has to offer at that position, with Kershaw being the most dominant pitcher in the world during the regular season. Yet Wainwright was smacked around by a surging Dodgers offense that took errant fastball after errant fastball and locked in on his breaking pitches.

When Wainwright did miss in the zone with hard stuff—fastball, sinker, cutter—the Dodgers tagged him for eight hits. And when the curveball found the hitting zone, three hits, not including a laser of a liner by Hanley Ramirez that was caught for an out.

“My fastball command was absolutely atrocious. Awful,” Wainwright said. “When they realized it, they sat on the slow stuff.”

By the end of all the contact, Wainwright had allowed six runs on 11 hits and Dodger Stadium transformed from sporting venue to all-out house party. A five-run lead with Kershaw on the mound—he started the game 67-0 when the Dodgers gave him at least four runs—was plenty reason to start the celebration while the Southern California sun still beamed.

Tsk, tsk. As Kemp so plainly noted, this is baseball. More specifically, postseason baseball. Very little goes as plotted.

After Kershaw allowed a first-inning home run on a curveball—the third-ever home run he’s allowed on that pitch in 1,423.1 innings—he put away 16 consecutive Cardinals hitters and seemed to be cruising. Everything was working. The fastball, the curveball, the swing-and-miss slider and the changeup, all of them working seamlessly together to create Kershaw’s latest masterpiece.

But…

It appears as if baseball games are not over until they’re over.

— Zachary D. Rymer (@zachrymer) October 4, 2014

For as lights-out as Kershaw has been over the last four seasons, not even he could duck the total wackiness of this game. Going into the seventh inning, Kershaw had allowed two baserunners, both of which hit solo home runs, and gave the Dodgers zero indication he was about to implode.

It started innocently: Matt Holliday lacing a single up the middle to start the inning, putting Kershaw into the stretch for the first time. Then Jhonny Peralta the same thing. Then Yadier Molina the same thing to load the bases, nobody out. Two more singles wrapped around a strikeout and suddenly it was a two-run Dodger lead.

Then a three-pitch strikeout and it seemed Kershaw was back. Furthering the assumption, he got ahead of Matt Carpenter 0-2, but the at-bat turned dim for Kershaw. He could not put away Carpenter, who worked to see six more pitches before thrashing a middle-middle fastball for a bases-clearing double.

Just like that, an entire country, an entire Twitter universe and entire baseball world was turned on its throbbing head. Stunned euphoria in certain parts of that world, stunned silence in others.

“If I don’t get in the way tonight,” Kershaw said, “we have a pretty good chance to win this.”

Just the thought of two of the best pitchers in this galaxy saying they got in the way of their teams’ chances to win a playoff game is absurd. But that’s how this night went.

What wasn’t so unexpected is that the bad blood between these two clubs started to boil in this first game. It also signaled the start of Wainwright’s meltdown when he hit Yasiel Puig with one of those catch-me-if-you-can fastballs.

Puig calmly strutted to first base, but Adrian Gonzalez, usually the calmest of the men in uniform, confronted hot-tempered St. Louis catcher Molina.

“We’re not going to start this again,” Gonzalez claimed to have told Molina.

“You have to respect me,” Gonzalez claimed was Molina’s response.

For Molina’s part, he said he couldn’t hear Gonzalez, but that he was screaming.

“I told him, ‘If you’re going to scream at me, get ready to fight,’ ” Molina claims was his actual response.

The dugouts emptied, the bullpen gates opened, but officials quickly restored order. Molina and Gonzalez seemed to be the only two fired up enough to raise their voices.

Wainwright and Puig found each other, spoke a few words and called it a day, the latter finishing the exchange with a friendly pat on Waino’s backside.

“It kinda woke a sleeping dog,” Carpenter said, acknowledging the Dodgers went bonkers after that, scoring six runs in the next three innings off Wainwright.

This beef between the Cardinals and Dodgers started last postseason, when the ninth pitch of Game 1 of the NL Championship Series stuck in Hanley Ramirez’s side, snapping one of his ribs and taking him out of the series. Two games later, Gonzalez doubled in a run off Wainwright and gestured toward the Dodger dugout to fire up his team. Postgame, Wainwright described Gonzalez’s behavior as “Mickey Mouse.”

In July of this season, the fireworks went off again when Cardinals flamethrower Carlos Martinez hit Ramirez with a fastball high on his shoulder. In the bottom of that inning, Kershaw plunked Matt Holliday. In the ninth inning, St. Louis closer Trevor Rosenthal hit Ramirez again, this time on the hand, knocking him out of the lineup for a few games. 

“It happened during the season, and it’s a trend,” Gonzalez said of the Cardinals hitting Dodgers players. “They can deny it as much as they want. They are going to say it’s not on purpose, but we all know (it is).

“If that’s the way they want to go at it, we’ll make adjustments.”

So that’s where we stand, in a completely unpredictable series that could erupt into punches at any moment. Or not.

This is baseball, though, and none of us knows what will happen next. So let’s just enjoy the drama as it unfolds.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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The big-money stars just might be coming on at the right time.

For nearly the entire season, the Los Angeles Dodgers could not get health or consistent, steady production from the bulk of their highly priced core, especially the men whose primary job is hitting.

But as the final week of the regular season begins and the postseason starts to yawn and stretch as it wakes, the Dodgers appear to be hitting full sprinting speed despite a 13-inning loss Monday night that kept their magic number to win the National League West at three.

From Aug. 31 through the start of Monday’s game, the Dodgers had one of the most devastating offenses in the majors with a .308/.369/.478 slash line and an .847 OPS. As a team this month, the Dodgers are second in the majors with 120 runs scored (three behind the leading Los Angeles Angels), leading with 27 home runs, second with 341 total bases and second with an .820 OPS.

That is monstrous production, and it’s the stars leading the way:

• Since the All-Star break, Matt Kemp, one of the game’s best all-around players in 2011 and part of 2012 before a shoulder injury sapped him, has hit .304/.363/.580 with a .943 OPS, 15 homers and 49 RBIs. In September, he has hit a major league-leading seven home runs and went into the week with a 1.044 OPS.

“He’s been great,” manager Don Mattingly told Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times. “It seems like a lot of our guys have been stepping up. He’s certainly one of those guys.”

• Since Sept. 5 and going into Monday, Hanley Ramirez has been red hot. He hit .451/.509/.588 with a 1.097 OPS, seven doubles and 11 RBIs in 15 games. He was also hitting .511 on balls he put into play.

• Adrian Gonzalez has joined the romp since the break. He went into Monday hitting .326/.378/.561 with a .939 OPS, 11 home runs and 52 RBIs in his previous 59 games.

• Yasiel Puig, the most polarizing player in the sport, had been going through a prolonged slump since Aug. 4. In 31 games from that date, Puig hit .186/.289/.212 without a home run and five RBIs. But from Sept. 13 to the start of Monday’s contest, Puig was 17-for-40 (.425) with a 1.152 OPS and two home runs in nine games.

• Finally, since Aug. 10 and entering the week, Carl Crawford was hitting .411/.449/.579 with a 1.029 OPS, seven doubles, three homers, 20 RBIs and eight stolen bases in 34 games. He also homered Monday.

Dodgers offense exploding at the right time. pic.twitter.com/yJqudqX8P6

— Angel Gonzalez (@angel_G96) September 20, 2014

Those five players have contracts worth a combined $568 million, although the Dodgers haven’t paid all of that money since Gonzalez, Crawford and Ramirez were acquired through trades after those deals had been finalized. Also, the bargain that is Dee Gordon has been back on track lately, hitting .312/.318/.385 in his previous 22 games before Monday.

“Hanley’s swinging better, Yasiel’s swinging better, Dee’s getting his hits, Adrian’s been the same all year,” Mattingly told J.P. Hoornstra of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin on Sunday. “Our guys know what’s at stake.” 

Right now, that’s a second consecutive NL West title. After this week: the franchise’s first World Series title in 26 years. That is why this team was built the way it was once the Guggenheim Baseball Management group took over ownership from the despised Frank McCourt in 2012.

This was the blueprint. This was what things were supposed to look like, how they were supposed to work. The Dodgers broke payroll records this year to field a team that trotted out expensive superstars at nearly every position. They spent so there would be no real breaks in the lineup for opposing pitchers, and they spent for pitching so that they could still walk away with victories even when the offense wasn’t running at optimal levels.

On that pitching front, Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu—they make a combined $398 million—have done their jobs. Dan Haren, on the other hand, has been a liability for a good portion of the season, but even the 34-year old veteran has learned to pitch with his declining tools. Over his last nine starts, including Monday, Haren has allowed 14 earned runs in 54 1/3 innings for a 2.32 ERA, making him another guy getting his act together at the right time. His start Monday kicked in a vesting option for 2015 that would pay him $10 million, the same as his salary from this season.

This Dodger club has no excuses. It’s relatively healthy—Ryu’s status for the postseason is still up in the air—and could gain home-field advantage for the first two rounds of the playoffs if things fall right.

And for maybe the first time since Guggenheim got its receipt for the team, everything seems to be moving as planned. All that’s left is another month of production, and this could be the team that breaks the championship dry spell for one of the game’s storied franchises.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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The fear was ever so real, terrifying the men who stood to be criticized when the spotlight shined brightest.

They could see the situation lurking, ready to embarrass the game when pitches, plays and outcomes matter the most—in October.

Major League Baseball, finally realizing how preposterous the interpretation of its rule was and that it could come back to chomp the league in the playoffs, did the right thing and clarified Rule 7.13, better known as the home plate collision rule.

For the most part, at least.

The league did not change the wording of the rule, but it sent an email to all 30 teams Tuesday, according to Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports. The email included pictures of where catchers could and could not set up, explanations for each frame and much-needed confirmation that the letter of the rule should not be interpreted so strictly when the clear outcome of a play is not affected by catcher positioning.

Basically, the message being things like this should never happen again:

MLB’s fear was that not clarifying the intent of the rule would eventually turn the playoffs into a farce if a call like that one in Miami were to occur next month. The league and outgoing commissioner Bud Selig could not afford that kind of sham outcome when its stage is stretched widest and eyeballs across the country will be open to blast the rule’s absurdity as it has been interpreted this season.

While some of the specifics of the rule remain fuzzy and will have to be redefined after the season, Rule 7.13 has not failed in its focus, which was to cut down on the number of home plate collisions and protect catchers. In that sense, it has been a huge success when you realize how difficult it has become to recall a collision this season.

For all of the consternation about 7.13, here is the truth: There have been no concussions in home-plate collisions, and that was the point.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) September 9, 2014

Where the rule has failed is in how it has confused umpires, managers and players. Hardly anyone knows how to interpret the rule in regard to when a catcher can enter the path of the runner or when a runner can actually collide with a catcher who has entered his path to the plate.

“The interpretation is what we need to get cleaned up,” Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly told Brown. “You see one and you see another exactly like it, and the call is the opposite.”

In that same media session, Bleacher Report asked Mattingly if he thought a collision, right or wrong in the spirit of the rule, needed to happen to help create some of that clarity.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Mattingly said. “But it has to be something from Major League Baseball. Before the playoffs.”

Other managers agree.

MLB’s biggest fear is for Rule 7.13 to impact a playoff or World Series game. “September’s pretty important, too,” said Matheny. #Cardinals

— Jeff Wallner (@JeffWallner) September 8, 2014

MLB understood this, not only because of egregious readings of the rule in real time but also because so many baserunners were electing to peel off of the play, conceding a catcher’s tag and then throwing their arms in the air as they looked at the umpire. And then, the replay command center in New York would either change the call or uphold it, and the rule would become murkier with each decision. 

Under the rule, a baserunner is still allowed to hit a catcher as long as he doesn’t leave his direct path to the plate. It just doesn’t happen, and the runners are choosing to avoid the contact, totally abandon their line and just hope for the replay to side with them.

The rule is just as muddled for catchers. Rule 7.13 does not properly define when they can or can’t enter the path of the runner, meaning they don’t know when they can move their feet from fair territory into foul ground. Can a catcher shift his feet after the fielder lets go of the throw, when it reaches the infield or not until it is in the catcher’s glove? No one really understands that part. 

The good thing is baseball, as it has implemented new rules involving replay, has shown a complete willingness to adjust the rules on the fly, and for the betterment of the game. After a slew of early-season replays that seemed to be botched because of MLB’s newly designed transfer rule, the league recognized the error in its change and shifted the rule back toward what it was in previous seasons.

In a press release, MLB labeled Rule 7.13 as “experimental” when it was announced just before the regular season started, so the league should take the results of the rule in its first year and adjust. Go back into the New York lab this offseason and explore the rule further and then clarify it so there is no confusion in 2015.

For now, what we have in the rule does not change, but it is now up to the umpires to use some common sense in interpreting it. MLB just better hope common sense follows it into October.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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The critics have always been there, picking, prodding, scoffing.

They started making their case when he was a teenager, not old enough to legally operate a motor vehicle but good enough to be dubbed baseball’s LeBron James. That sparked it all. The detractors pounced on everything from a junior college ejection to him playing too hard to him not playing hard enough.

Bryce Harper, in part because of his own doing and in part because he was a lightning rod, was lit up no matter what he did. And this season it hit another level when his midsummer struggles led to talks about him being demoted to the minors and even the idea that, at 21 years old, he could be traded for pitching.

Well, Harper is now shutting up everyone who questioned his on-field talent and off-the-field life with the most impressive and impactful offensive stretch of his young major league career. Since the early part of August, Harper has wrecked the ball and been a huge reason why the Washington Nationals have gone 20-10 in their last 30 games and surged to the best record in the National League.

Since Aug. 7 and through this past weekend, Harper hit .306/.356/.537 with an .893 OPS, eight home runs, 15 RBI and 33 total hits. At the start of that stretch, Harper hit a walk-off home run a day after the dust-up about the possibility of him being optioned to the minors because he was hitting .250 with three home runs through his first 53 games of the season.

“He needed that probably more than any hitter in the big leagues,” Washington reliever Craig Stammen told The Washington Post after that walk-off shot.

In that same Adam Kilgore story, Denard Span elaborated on how important Harper is to the team’s success.

“We need to get him going,” Span said. “When he’s hitting it makes us 10 times more dangerous. It makes the lineup obviously deeper. Hopefully he takes that and builds off of it and keeps it going.”

He has done exactly that. Harper, one of Major League Baseball’s most recognizable stars, is now in position to lead the Nationals into October, and if his hot run continues through autumn and the Nats are playing deep into next month, critics will be forced to zip their lips.

Harper’s teammates have plenty to do with how far this team goes, obviously. The club was built on starting pitching, and that group has been lights out since the All-Star break. The rotation had a 3.08 ERA with a 4.4 wins above replacement (WAR) mark in the second part of the season through Sunday. Both numbers were the best in the league in that time.

And their other superstar, Stephen Strasburg, is rebounding in the way Harper has. Strasburg has been flat-out ace-like in his last eight starts dating back to July 29. That is right around the time Harper got hot and the Nationals started to push their lead in the NL East to the current eight games. In those eight starts, Strasburg has a 2.79 ERA and opponents are hitting .208 against him.

As for as the others in the lineup with Harper, they have helped this surge by leading the league with 40 home runs in August while coming in second in slugging percentage and OPS. They’ve continued to hit in September, putting up 10 homers.

The Nationals are healthy now, something they waited to say for the first four months of the season when nicks and bruises and strains and tightness threatened their place in the playoff hunt. If they can stay mostly in one piece, they have the parts to be the best team in baseball. 

If Harper is on, he has the talent to be one of the best hitters.

Clearly Harper doesn’t have this all figured out yet. He still makes mistakes on the field, like colliding with a teammate at a critical juncture of a game, and the ones off the field, like snapping at a respected baseball writer for asking about a hitting slump two years ago. Those miscues are likely to continue as long as the spotlight is shining on him.

Bryce Harper walks over to Denard Span during the pitching change. Span doesn‘t budge, looks like he wants Harper to die in a fire.

— Dennis Deitch (@DennisDeitch) September 6, 2014

He is also still 21, and won’t be 22 until Oct. 16. So maturity will come with age.

But Harper’s age does not mean he isn’t a critical fixture in the Nationals lineup. They really do need him hitting. He has an offensive skill set that can change a lineup and how opponents approach it. He has speed, power and the ability to hit the ball to the opposite field, and that kind of combination, when utilized, can carry a team for a month.

The month we are talking about is October, and Harper has his swing back just in time to give it a run.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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This is not on Billy Beane, and it is not a result of Yoenis Cespedes living in a different time zone.

This is just epic all on its own without placing blame or cause on either of those two men.

The 2014 Oakland A’s have set themselves on fire, and it is quite something at which to marvel. The best team in baseball five weeks ago is now playing like the worst, capped Monday night by maybe its worst loss of the season that now has it eight games behind the Los Angeles Angels in the American League West while cutting its wild-card lead to 1.5 games.

After giving up the lead to the Chicago White Sox with one out to go, the A’s lost the game in the 12th inning when Tyler Flowers, who tied the game with a homer in the ninth, won it with a walk-off home run.

This latest loss, on the heels of blowing a ninth-inning lead by allowing two runs without giving up a hit in the inning against the Houston Astros on Sunday, was brutal. 

that is a horrendous loss for the Athletics

— Mark Simon (@msimonespn) September 9, 2014 

I am out of words for you A’s.

— Wendy Thurm (@hangingsliders) September 9, 2014

Those are the kind of reactions the A’s have been eliciting since last month. The team is 14-23 since July 30 and 2-9 since Aug. 28. Its lead in the AL West has gone from four games on the morning of Aug. 11 to a virtually un-erasable hole.

In their last 27 games, the A’s have lost 19 times and given up nine games in the wild-card race.

This downward spiral, a pool of quicksand the A’s find themselves in, has all happened in a flash, coinciding with the trade that some believed would make the A’s favorites to reach the World Series in the AL.

When Beane traded for a true No. 1 starter in Jon Lester, it cost him Yoenis Cespedes, but it made complete sense. Cespedes was going to be in a walk year the following season and wasn’t exactly setting major league records for hitting proficiency—he hit .256/.303/.464 with 17 home runs in 101 games. Lester gave the A’s, on paper, the best rotation in the league and made what many considered was the best team in the league even better.

And then, this epic collapse started. However, to properly understand just how bad it has gotten for Oakland, you need to know how good it was before.

“When you put it into perspective,” A’s manager Bob Melvin told John Hickey of the San Jose Mercury News heading into the All-Star break, “overall the numbers suggest we’ve had a pretty good first half.”

*The A’s won 59 games before the All-Star break, the most of any team in franchise history.

*Their run differential at the break was plus-145, which Hickey reported is the fourth-best mark at the break of any club since 1940.

*The A’s led the majors in walks, were second in runs scored and had the fourth-fewest strikeouts.

*Their pitching allowed one run or less in 27 of 95 games, and their overall 3.09 ERA was second-best in the majors.

*At one point in the first part of the season, the A’s were flirting with the 100 percent mark when it came to their chances to make the playoffs.

They’ve gone splat since then.

They are 21-27 since the All-Star break, but while the run differential has gone up to plus-152, the ERA has grown to 3.72. Stud starters Sonny Gray (2.79 ERA in first half, 4.06 in the second), Scott Kazmir (2.38, 5.96) and Jeff Samardzija (2.78, 3.99) have all pitched far worse than they had in the first three-and-a-half months.

The offense batted .222/.300/.344 in August, and it hasn’t gotten any better in September. While the A’s missed Cespedes’ power, his replacements were getting on base more often than Cespedes in August.

Oakland also hasn’t been very good in one-run games this year.

The A’s were 30-20 in one-run games last year. 20-23 in one-run games this year, including 3-9 since Aug. 10, 1-5 in last six games.

— Jane Lee (@JaneMLB) September 9, 2014

Meanwhile, Lester has been just fine with a 2.59 ERA since arriving in Oakland, and the bullpen, with its 2.85 ERA, continues to be one of the best in the league despite Sunday and Monday meltdowns.

As you can see, the blame here can’t be placed on general manager Beane or the loss of Cespedes. This is quite simply a very good team collapsing on itself at all levels.

“You’ve got to get 27 outs, not 26,” A’s outfielder Sam Fuld told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle after Monday’s blowup. “Morale has been fine, it’s not a lack of effort on anybody’s part, we’re just not playing very good baseball, really, it doesn’t have anything to do with our character. Unfortunately we just don’t have a lot of guys swinging it as well as they’re capable of, and we had some miscues. But it’s not a lack of focus or lack of effort.”

It certainly is not, and it is also not because the A’s don’t have Cespedes in the lineup. It’s a combination of a lot of things, none of which is because Beane acquired Lester in a shrewd deadline move.

For the A’s to fall after the kind of first half they experienced, it was going to take something more historic than trading away a power source. And with a few weeks to go in this season, the A’s are making their best effort to accomplish exactly that.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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The numbers are now celebrated only in relevant context, and the comparisons to himself as a productive superstar are less frequent, replaced by comparisons to himself as an injured shell of one of the greatest hitters the sport has ever seen.

Albert Pujols is again a meaningful piece of a contending lineup, albeit not as an elite bat or the driving force. The Los Angeles Angels, partly because of his steady health and above-average production, are a World Series threat three seasons into Pujols’ highly priced era with the Orange County franchise.

At what seems like an old 34, mostly because he hit like few others ever have for so long, Pujols is the elder statesman in a veteran clubhouse. But it is his winning pedigree, the October experience, and any kind of leadership qualities that should get better with age—those are things that make Albert Pujols as valuable as anyone else on the Angels roster.

Never one to be overly candid or to overtly display leadership qualities, Pujols keeps things simple, at least publicly.

“I’m just one of those 25 guys that want to accomplish the dream,” Pujols told the Los Angeles Times’ Helene Elliott last week, “and that’s to win a championship.”

With a steady Pujols, on the field and in the clubhouse, the Angels are as good a bet as any team in the majors right now.

The team’s four-game weekend sweep of their American League West rival, the Oakland A’s, goes a ways in realizing that dream. Pujols’ output in that series—four hits in 15 at-bats and two RBIs—was not eye-popping, but his numbers since the Fourth of July are as productive as any significant stretch he’s had with the Angels since signing his 10-year, $240 million contract before the 2012 season.

In his last 52 games, Pujols is hitting .311/.371/.485 with an .857 OPS, seven home runs and 33 RBIs. These aren’t superstar kind of numbers, but when you consider that Pujols, with the help of injuries, has been in extreme decline since leaving St. Louis, they are steady. And a steady Pujols, one who shockingly leads the team in games played (134), is a big deal.

Albert Pujols’ batting average since July 9th hasn‘t been higher than .279 or lower than .270 in 187 plate appearances, that’s hard to do.

— CJ Nitkowski (@CJNitkowski) August 28, 2014

He is 10th in the AL in home runs (24) and RBIs (83) and has a realistic shot to hit the 30-100 plateaus, numbers that would be more meaningful this year as opposed to 2012 (30 and 105) when they were mostly empty calories.

“I think you’re seeing Albert closer to where he was in his heyday,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia told the Times’ Elliott. “He’s anchored the middle of our lineup.”

Depending on Pujols to do that entering this season would have created eye rolls and headshakes. His last two seasons have been riddled with injuries and limited him to 253 games. Last season, plantar fasciitis cut his season down to 99 games and led to career lows in average (.258), home runs (17), RBIs (64), on-base percentage (.330), slugging (.437), OPS (.767) and OPS-plus (116).

He was down across the board, and even though his contract seemed like a bad investment when it was initially made, it looked absolutely wretched after last summer. Wondering if Pujols would ever be healthy or productive enough to give the Angels acceptable value for even one season of the deal seemed iffy at best. 

Maybe as shocking as any of those slides is Pujols’ decline in walks. It is understandable that his walk rates would be down the previous two seasons—he had a career-low 7.8 percent in 2012, according to Fangraphs.com—but this season he is at 7.4 percent despite being productive and hitting in front of a productive Josh Hamilton most of the year. Pujols is swinging at fewer pitches outside the strike zone, but pitchers are simply challenging him more than they ever have before, as Fangraphs.com’s numbers show.

That is telling because the fear he once struck into pitchers has quickly faded.

There is also evidence that Pujols, probably because of knee and foot injuries, has driven the ball to the opposite field with less relevancy since becoming an Angel, again making him a diminished threat, according to ESPN’s Peter Keating. When Pujols does go the other way, though, he is productive, Baseball-Reference.com says. He is just doing it less frequently, again showing that pitchers are more willing to challenge him these days.

Pujols has had his share of critics, even during his St. Louis days, who questioned his role as leader as recently as the Cardinals’ last World Series run. And recently, there was a repeat of what has always been classic Pujols, telling the Times’ Elliott that reporters should not be so quick to criticize him since they’ve never played the game and don’t understand its difficulties.

Any reporter who has ever had dealings with Pujols and attempted to discuss anything other than his positive on-field exploits knows the player can be quick to cut off interviews. Criticism of any kind is dismissed with a gruff demeanor, unlike, say, teammate Josh Hamilton, who fields all questions with grace and poise even if some don’t like his answers. Finding Pujols in the clubhouse to answer questions after a bad game is a crap shoot, and he, the house, pretty much always wins.

Pujols has always been thin-skinned in this way. And according to Bleacher Report colleague Scott Miller, when Miller was with CBSSports.com, Pujols can also be this way with teammates. Miller cited sources in recounting a near fistfight in 2012 between Pujols and then-teammate Torii Hunter, recognized as a good teammate and mentor to young players, after Hunter criticized Pujols for pouting when he played poorly even if the team won.

As Pujols loves to remind, the past is the past. The Angels don’t need Pujols to be the rah-rah cheerleader type. But Pujols won two World Series with the Cardinals, and it is that experience that can help the Angels now.

Whatever advice or tutelage Pujols has in him, or in whatever ways he can lead by example, as the magnifying glass gets closer to this club, this is the stretch where it can become invaluable to a franchise that hasn’t seen playoff baseball since 2009.

Here is Pujols’ chance to add to his resume and reputation off the field.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous 3 seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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There is no jockeying back and forth at the top of the wild-card standings for these teams. Not yet, at least.

But just because these teams face sizable deficits in those races with about six weeks remaining until Game 162 doesn’t mean their chances are flatlined.

Dark horses? Sure. Long shots? A couple of them. Time to look to 2015? Eh, not quite.

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