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The division was once a runaway, and that was as recently as a week ago. 

In the six games since, the National League Central has turned into a legitimate race as the St. Louis Cardinals, the division’s dominant squad for nearly this entire year, have gone on an ill-timed slide. That run in the wrong direction has opened the window ever so slightly for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and even the Chicago Cubs, to climb through.

Michael Wacha, arguably the Cardinals’ most consistently dominant pitcher, was the latest piece of the rotation to get battered in the last week, allowing six runs over four innings Tuesday in what ended up being an 8-5 loss to the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis’ third consecutive defeat.

The team has also lost five of its last six, with four of the losses to the Pirates and Cubs, to see their lead over the Pirates shrink to 4.5 games. The Cubs, winners of five in a row and seven of their last 10, are 6.5 games back.

Per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cardinals manager Mike Matheny told reporters after the latest loss, in which his team scored five times in the seventh to make it a game:

You’re going to have days like this. You don’t like to see them consecutively. You don’t like to see them in the same week. You don’t like to see them at all. But they do happen. We’ve had so many of those one-run, two-run games all season long, and we’ve figured out how to stay in those and how to win those and how to come back in those. None of that has gone away. This is where we are right now.

The Cardinals had been a team on pace to win 100 games, picking up their 86th win on Sept. 1. The reason for that triple-digit projection was the team’s pitching staff, particularly its outstanding rotation.

However, over the last six games, the staff has a 6.00 ERA and the rotation sits at 6.25, although there are three quality starts mixed into that stretch. The pitching has allowed five or more runs in seven of its past nine games after doing so, amazingly, in just 32 of the previous 131 contests.

The worst of the outings came Monday from Lance Lynn, who allowed six runs in 2.1 innings and afterward griped about pitching on a few days of extra rest, per Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Wacha had been dazzling in his previous six starts before Tuesday’s blowup. In those previous turns, he had a 0.92 ERA and the team went 5-1. So while the pitching numbers don’t look great, there probably isn’t a need for extreme panic when it comes to that group.

“It hasn’t gone well for the Cardinals here in recent starts, particularly these last games against the Pirates and now the Cubs,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Jeff Gordon told CineSport’s Noah Coslov on Tuesday.

“This team was pitching at a historically great level start after start after start,” Gordon continued. “Some downturn is inevitable. Guys will get tired. Small injuries will occur.”

It has not just been the pitchers, though. The offense has not held its own, scoring just six times in the last three games, and not one of those runs has come before the seventh inning. Going into Tuesday, the lineup had a .244/.302/.310 slash line while scoring just 11 times in its previous five games.

After being shut out by the Cubs on Monday, the Cardinals had just three hits and no runs going into the seventh on Tuesday before they erupted for all five of their runs. That inning gave the team more runs in the span of 10 hitters than it had in each of its previous five games, but the Cardinals went down meekly again in the eighth and ninth innings.

While the Cardinals are enduring their struggles, the Pirates have gained ground in the division despite losing six of their last nine. As for the Cubs, their five-game winning streak has gained them four games in the standings, and while winning the division still seems like a long shot, they are helping the Pirates chase down the Cardinals with their last two victories in St. Louis.

The Cardinals still have a 100 percent chance of making the postseason, but their chances of winning the division have dropped from 91 percent six games ago to 88 percent, according to FanGraphs’ playoff projections.

“It’s not something we’re accustomed to,” Wacha told reporters of the team’s losing ways and the rotation’s struggles, per Goold. “It’s not something people should get used to. These past couple nights haven’t been typical of what we’ve been doing all year. We have to get back to what had been working, get back on the roll. We hate putting our team in that situation.”

The situation is quickly heading toward dire just days after the Cardinals had a stranglehold on the NL Central. Chances are they still win it, but this is suddenly a division worth watching after their latest skid.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

This will not be easily forgotten.

The New York Mets have trudged along, disappointing their fanbase for the last eight seasons, but 2015 changed that. They signed players, made trades and developed a promising young core—position guys and pitchers alike.

And five months into this season, this had paid dividends in a big and exciting way. The starting rotation is at the center of it all. It is young, hard-throwing and has shown how completely dominant it can be when it is on, giving the Mets a legitimate chance to win the National League pennant now that an NL East title seems inevitable.

These are the Mets, though. There is always a wrench, and it was just chucked at them by their most marketable and beloved—until now—player, Matt Harvey, who is pitching exceptionally well in his first season back from Tommy John surgery.

Almost inexplicably, the 26-year-old ace appears to be sticking by his super-agent, Scott Boras, and imposing a hard innings limit on himself, 180 innings to be exact and of which he has already fulfilled 166.

Even with the postseason looming next month, Harvey’s first ever and the Mets’ first since 2006, the limit is supposedly nonnegotiable and new news to the team, first brought to their attention late last month by Boras in an email to general manager Sandy Alderson. Newsday’s David Lemmon shared Alderson’s thoughts regarding the situation:

Alderson on Harvey: “Ultimately it’s his decision. It’s not the team’s and not his agent’s.” (more) … #mets

— David Lennon (@DPLennon) September 5, 2015

Presumably not wanting to go against his agent, Harvey is purposely murky and wishy-washy in his answers to inquiries about whether he will pitch in the playoffs. His ominous words lead everyone to believe he will not, but that he just doesn’t want to be the bad guy and come right out and say it. Harvey told reporters Saturday:

I’m the type of person, I never want to put the ball down. Obviously, I hired Scott as my agent and went to Dr. [James] Andrews as my surgeon because I trusted them to keep my career going and keep me healthy.

As far as being out there, being with my teammates and playing, I’m never going to want to stop, but as far as the surgeon and my agent having my back and kind of looking out for the best of my career, they’re obviously speaking their minds about it.

Harvey, however, did not. And the questions about how much more he will pitch this year linger.

This will not be easily forgotten. Not by a long-suffering fanbase and not by his teammates, because this could cost all of them a legitimate shot at a World Series.

Plus, there was this last week from manager Terry Collins, seemingly boasting about the tenacity of his pitcher as the innings mounted and the playoffs approached:

This is the time of year we’ve talked about, that he’s talked about. One of the things we had discoursed all summer long when all the innings things started to rear its ugly head, Matt said, ‘I’m pitching in the playoffs. If we get to the playoffs, I want to be able to pitch.’ In all the discussions we’ve had, he’s said, ‘Listen, I’ll do it but I’m pitching in October.’

Now, it appears Harvey is backtracking on those statements, appeasing his top-flight agent and pissing off anyone loyal to the Mets. And they should be mad, because as we all saw with Stephen Strasburg’s 2012 shutdown by the Washington Nationals, these kinds of real opportunities to win cannot be taken for granted.

What Harvey means to the Mets is measurable in the stats and the radar gun. It is immeasurable in terms of him being a valve that helps pump competitive blood through the team. He’s got the 2.60 ERA and the fastball that can knock on 99 mph’s door. But if he is indeed deciding to pack it in, the blood flow slows down significantly.

The team still has co-ace Jacob deGrom and stud rookie Noah Syndergaard and another promising rookie in Steven Matz. Teams envy that trio, but the foursome that includes Harvey is elite, much more intimidating and the reason the Mets had been seen as a threat in the playoffs.

Without Harvey, it seems the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team almost certain to face the Mets in the NL Division Series, have a clear and obvious advantage. If they go on to knock out the Mets, and Harvey does not pitch, the offense is unforgivable only because talk of a hard 180-inning limit did not surface until it was virtually too late for the club to do anything about it.

It can’t manage it because his current total is already too close to the ceiling. It can’t replace him because all the trade windows have closed. It can’t improve its postseason chances because Harvey is just too critical a part of its success.

So now everyone involved keeps waiting. They wait to see if this game-changing problem can be rectified. They wait to see if Harvey actually commits one way or another. They wait to see how damaging his shutdown could be to their October fate.

All the while, everyone knows—New York will not easily forget this.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

We didn’t get the biggest, most significant drama of the MLB week until nearly the end. And we thank everyone involved for that.

The New York Mets’ Matt Harvey is at the center of it, along with agent Scott Boras. That makes this perfect for nationwide attention and debate, so we’ll get into that shortly.

As for the rest of the week, there was plenty. We saw amazing plays, another long-awaited prospect promotion and what is likely a farewell to one of a storied franchise’s premier players.

Let’s do some catching up.

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Chris Davis is back in line.

The man who looked primed to take over as Major League Baseball’s home run king before being derailed by an atrocious 2014 and a drug suspension is again performing his craft as well as anyone in the sport.

Back in 2013, Davis was the kind of player franchises like his Baltimore Orioles built around.

He was 27 years old, durable and hitting the ball with close to as much authority as anyone the game had ever seen on a one-year basis. His final line that season was .286/.370/.634 with a 1.004 OPS, 53 home runs, 42 doubles and 138 RBI. He finished third in American League MVP voting behind Miguel Cabrera and Mike Trout and still had two seasons before free agency, when he would be poised for a significant payday.

But 2014 was a disaster.

Davis, amid a nagging oblique injury that cost him 12 games, hit a major league worst .196 among qualifiers. His 96 OPS+ showed he was a below-average player despite his 26 home runs, and to top off everything, he was suspended 25 games for unauthorized use of Adderall. That ban kept him off the team’s playoff roster as well.

As drastic as that year-to-year swing was, this summer has brought another change—this one a tick closer to what he was in 2013. And after a big Friday night when he smacked two home runs—his second consecutive multihomer game—to take over the major league lead with 40 long balls in a 10-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, it is clear the 29-year-old Davis is back in position for a massive contract once he hits free agency after this season.

Chris Davis is now the 1st player in Orioles history to have multiple 40 HR seasons. (Also 2013, 53) #CongratsChris! pic.twitter.com/0gcIsj2FQh

— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) September 5, 2015

Davis told Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun in August:

I think I spent so much of last season and even the offseason taking swings that I had taken last year that weren’t really the swings I was looking for. I think I was trying to protect [the oblique] and subconsciously there was a little uncertainty about letting it go. Really right around the All-Star break, I felt like I had a few at-bats where it just kind of clicked for me and I’m taking that swing that I was looking for. I’m getting that swing on a day-to-day basis.

That Davis has once again found his swing has shown in the second half. Entering Friday, he was sixth in the American League with a 1.042 OPS, 181 wRC+ and a .435 wOBA since the break. His 21 homers are the best in league since then.

But it is not just the second half. Davis, who has a therapeutic-use exemption for Adderall this year, as he had in the past before the suspension, has been a productive hitter all season. He went into Friday batting .253/.339/.538 with an .877 OPS and 136 OPS+. He also now has 100 RBI on the year.

Those aren’t quite the numbers he put up in 2013, but they are enough to get the attention of other teams in need of a big, middle-of-the-order bat. And with Scott Boras as his agent, nobody should be surprised if Davis wrangles in the kind of contract former teammate Nelson Cruz netted from the Seattle Mariners last offseason after he had a similar campaign to the one Davis is having now.

Cruz got four years and $57 million, and he turned 35 this season and had a performance-enhancing drug suspension stemming from the Biogenesis scandal in his past.

That puts it completely in the realm of possibility that Davis could get a bigger deal than Cruz’s, especially in another year when pitching is the superior, more available commodity. It would also mean the Orioles would lose the major league leader in homers in back-to-back offseasons.

Bordick said it: when he’s like this, Chris Davis is a “freak show”. On another HR binge. 2 more tonight. Free agent cash register rings.

— Mark Viviano (@MarkWJZ) September 5, 2015

There should not be much in the way of power on the free-agent market this winter, especially since the Toronto Blue Jays are likely to pick up their $10 million option on Edwin Encarnacion. Justin Upton and Yoenis Cespedes are the other big bats beyond Davis, but neither brings the kind of power the Orioles slugger does when he’s healthy.

That means Davis, who failed to come to an agreement with the club after it reportedly offered him an extension following the 2013 season, stands to be the highest-paid hitter on the market come the fall. For now, neither he nor the team will discuss any contract situations.

“That’s just the way it’s going to be,” Davis told Encina on August 13. “I think it’s selfish to sit here and talk about my future with this team when we have such a bright future for the next couple of months and I want my focus to be on the field and everybody’s focus to be on the field.”

That focus will soon change to the financial part of the game, and for Davis, the attention will be significant.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter, @awitrado, and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The struggles moved from one level to the next without a stumble.

Joey Gallo was part of the heralded rookie prospect class to debut or become full-time major leaguers this spring and summer. During his first five weeks with the Texas Rangers, there were clear signals of why Gallo gained instant membership into the group. He flashed incredible power, smashing five home runs in his first 14 games, one of them off Clayton Kershaw, with a .942 OPS.

There were also signs of vulnerability. Gallo was a strikeout machine, punching out 44 percent of the time. Once pitchers realized they didn’t have to throw Gallo a pitch in the zone to get him out, his OPS dropped to .529 with one homer and 27 strikeouts in his final 14 games (52 plate appearances).

Things did not get much better when Gallo was sent down to Triple-A Round Rock—he was initially called up from Double-A Frisco. He had struck out 90 times in 53 games with a .289 OBP by the time September rolled around, and the Rangers recalled him to the majors. It was expected that most of his playing time would come in the form of a pinch hitter, although he started Wednesday and went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts in his return to the lineup.

However, none of this means Gallo cannot be a factor in the Rangers’ playoff push, one that currently has them leading the race for the second American League wild-card spot and just two games behind the Houston Astros in the AL West. When a hitter has the kind of prodigious power Gallo has, he has the potential to alter a team’s fate for the better whether off the bench in late innings or as a spot starter.

“All the things he went through, all of that has to happen for a young guy,” manager Jeff Banister told reporters this week. “When they come out the other side and they confront another problem, then they realize they’ve been here before, that they have a tool in their toolbox and reach down and find it.”

Gallo searched for that tool during his entire stint with Round Rock. Realizing his myriad weaknesses—plate coverage, willingness to chase out of the zone and swinging-strike percentage among them—were exposed in the big leagues, the 21-year-old set out to fix them. The problem: There was a huge variety of remedies available to him, and instead of focusing on one, he attempted to use them all.

He tried altering his two-strike approach. He worked on covering both sides of the plate since he was exploited on the outer half in his first major league call-up. He worked on overall swing mechanics. And those were just the things he was willing to admit to reporters when speaking to them Tuesday.

None of it seemed to work. In Gallo’s first 40 at-bats with Round Rock, he hit .175/.250/.400. He eventually improved to .195/.289/.450 in 228 plate appearances at the time the Rangers recalled him as a September addition.

“I tried to eat a whole buffet in one sitting,” Gallo told Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. “I went down there and got in a bad way about some things. But I’d rather do that down there than up here.”

The one change we might notice, the one that actually stuck from his time with Round Rock, is a more open batting stance. Gallo used a wider approach in high school and rookie ball, and his Double-A hitting coach, Justin Mashore, suggested the subtle change.

“I tried to make too many adjustments before,” Gallo told Grant. “But I’ve hit this way before, and I’m comfortable. Right now, I’m trying to do what is comfortable.”

The change was not effective at all in Gallo’s second Rangers debut Wednesday. Facing San Diego Padres right-hander Ian Kennedy, Gallo made himself an easy out by swinging and missing five times in his three at-bats. From Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Ian Kennedy has struck out Joey Gallo three times on a total of 10 pitches. When he makes contact it’ll probably go 600 feet.

— Dennis Lin (@dennistlin) September 3, 2015

But notice the last sentence of that tweet, because no matter what Gallo does or how he might struggle this month, that possibility always exists. The Rangers know that, and so do opposing pitchers.

His power plays. Always. It does not matter if Gallo is slumping or if he is hot, if he is getting sporadic at-bats or regular playing time. The possibility of him wrecking a pitcher’s mistake is the kind of off-the-bench, game-changing force that all contending teams want at their disposal as they enter the final weeks of the season.

Gallo might strike out a ton. That is almost a given at this point in his career. But he can also run into a homer or five, and if they come in high-leverage situations this late in the year, they could be enough to help push the Rangers back into the playoffs a season after they finished last in their division.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

As if things were not going to be difficult enough. 

The Toronto Blue Jays added game-changing pieces to their roster before the non-waiver trade deadline, and a barrage of wins and a sprint up the American League East standings ensued. They have taken over the top spot with a behemoth offense and strong pitching staff, and it does not look like they are going to slow down anytime soon. 

That leaves the New York Yankees chasing a team that looks like it could be the league’s most complete. Meanwhile, the Yankees have a questionable rotation and an offense that showed real signs of regression over the last month—and now a prolonged injury could severely slash their chances of returning to the top of the standings.

After Mark Teixeira was re-examined by the team’s doctor Tuesday, it was determined the first baseman’s bone bruise to his right shin is more significant than the team originally believed. So now the 35-year-old All-Star, in the midst of a resurgent season, will be on crutches for a few days and is still several weeks from returning to the lineup. The injury happened Aug. 17, and Teixeira has started just once since then.

“His bone bruise has not healed at all,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told reporters Tuesday. “There is no stress fracture. That was the biggest worry because he hasn’t responded to [treatment]. But the bone bruise has not healed in any way, shape or form.” 

Teixeira is hitting .255/.357/.548, with a 149 OPS+, 31 home runs and 79 RBI this season. Needless to say, he has been one of the league’s top offensive performers this season, ranking fourth in OPS+ behind Nelson Cruz, Mike Trout and Josh Donaldson.

The Yankees and Blue Jays both won Tuesday night, so New York remains 1.5 games behind. The Bombers have won six of their last 10 games, but they lost ground to Toronto as it went 8-2 in that span.

So, how do the Yankees remedy this Teixeira situation?

The initial stopgap was hitting prospect Greg Bird. He had a 1.091 OPS and two home runs in his first five games with the Yankees, all wins. But in his next 11 contests entering Tuesday, he hit .211/.311/.237 and failed to hit another homer. Bird was 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday, and his struggles in his first call-up are being well-documented since they are coming in a time of need.

There is also the Alex Rodriguez option, which the Yankees can’t seem to agree upon. A-Rod went from one of the league’s best hitters during the first half to a guy who has significantly struggled in the second, particularly in August.

So it appears he won’t be able to fill the offensive void Teixeira’s absence left. And according to Cashman, Rodriguez will not spell Teixeira on the field, although manager Joe Girardi says the team needs A-Rod at first base while its best hitter is on the mend, per David Lennon of Newsday.

In a related note, Cashman insists that he does not see A-Rod at 1B. Girardi, however, says he needs Rodriguez in mix there now. #Yankees

— David Lennon (@DPLennon) September 1, 2015

When Teixeira initially fouled a ball off his leg, just below his right knee, the team did not believe it would have to find a long-term replacement. The original diagnosis was Teixeira would miss about a week, 10 days at most.

That was manageable. The Yankees, in fact, got through that stretch without disappearing off the AL East radar completely. They went 5-5 over their next 10 games, though the offense struggled as they lost 2.5 games in the standings. Had Teixeira come back after that, things would not have seemed so terrible.

He has not, though.

“He’s going to be down for clearly an extended period of time,” Cashman told reporters. “They’ve ruled out any other complications. It’s a timing mechanism, and it’s just taking a hell of a lot longer than anybody would have expected.”

Since Aug. 18, the Blue Jays have gone 10-3. The Yankees have gone 8-6. New York has bandaged the bleeding by winning four of its last five, but it’s feasted on the Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox, two clubs destined to finish miles under .500.

Once the Yankees finish up in Boston on Wednesday, things get more rugged. Their next six games are at home against the Tampa Bay Rays and Baltimore Orioles.

The four after that are also at home. Against the Blue Jays. Without Teixeira.

It’s the biggest, most critical series of both teams’ seasons. National television and media will descend. The microscope will be focused. And even with another series between the teams remaining after that, it is quite possible the division will be decided in those four days in the Bronx.

Now we know Teixeira, the Yankees’ best offensive weapon, will not be there. And that absence, at that time, could determine which team wins the series—and the division.

Stats are courtesy of FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.com, unless noted otherwise. 

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

More than one full month remains until we can know anything for sure when it comes to baseball’s postseason.

The second wild-card berth keeps several teams mathematically and realistically alive deep into September, and this year possibly into early October as the regular-season stretches into a seventh month on the baseball calendar.

But as we step into the final month(ish), we can be pretty confident in some of the postseason participants hanging on to their spots through the next four-plus weeks of the regular season.

Knowing that, we shouldn’t feel too bad looking forward, doing a little guessing, a little prognosticating and a little bit of stating the obvious in calling the 10 playoff participants and matchups for the first four division series. We can do so using the standings through Monday and some help from the FanGraphs playoff odds.

Plenty of shuffling can still happen, but as September begins, this is what the early part of these coming playoffs might look like.

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LOS ANGELES — Jake Arrieta’s solidification came loud, clear and dominant.

No-hitters tend to do that. But when they do it for an ace on the rise who’s on a team thinking about the World Series, they do so with more authority.

Already in the midst of greatness this season, the Chicago Cubs’ right-hander fired the game of his life Sunday night at Dodger Stadium, striking out 12 on his way to a no-hitter and a 2-0 Cubs win.

His ball danced. It ducked. It shimmied. It disappeared. And there was almost nothing the Dodgers could do about it except rely on a scorekeeper’s call to keep them from being no-hit for the second time in 10 days.

The no-hitter was Arrieta’s 14th consecutive quality start, the most for a Cubs pitcher since Greg Maddux in 1992. He was already hot coming in, but this latest outing proved him to be one of Major League Baseball’s premier aces.

“He has that kind of stuff nightly,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “It’s really crazy. The ball looks like a whiffle ball from the side. You can see the break on the slider, the cutter and the curveball.

“Right now he’s pitching at a different level. And he deserves it. This is not a surprise at all.”

Nor should it be. Arrieta was already a topic for the national media this season, and talk of the 29-year-old was ramping up as the Cubs visited markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

National media exists in the Midwest, and it existed in New York when he and the Cubs visited there a couple months ago. But, as Maddon noted, his star is different right now. The Cubs are legitimate playoff threats, and Arrieta is showing to be their ace.

On the Cubs’ latest road trip through the Bay Area and Southern California, the national media was out to talk to Arrieta, not just about his team’s surprising rise but about his own out-of-nowhere emergence as one of the league’s top starters.

In both cities he was posed questions about what has changed for him—what has taken him from a starter too familiar with disappointment to one capable of dominating an entire league and possibly starting a wild-card game with his team’s life on the line.

“I guess you want to get used to that kind of stuff,” Arrieta said. “It means you’ve been good for a while, right?”

His last 52 starts, not counting for the occasional hiccup, would definitely qualify as being good for more than a while. Going into this no-hitter, Arrieta, 29, had a 2.37 ERA, 0.986 WHIP and 2.42 FIP in two full seasons with the Cubs, covering the previous 51 turns.

In parts of four seasons with the Baltimore Orioles before being traded in 2013, he had a 5.46 ERA in 69 games, 63 of them starts for a right-hander who was rated as a top-100 prospect in consecutive years by both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus.

That was a time when Arrieta was out of his baseball mind, entrenched in overthinking his delivery and what others—coaches, scouts, other pitchers—thought he should look like.

Then, as he was finding ways to rid himself of that thinking, Baltimore traded him for Steve Clevenger and Scott Feldman. The Orioles had given up on Arrieta because they needed bullpen help in the midst of a playoff run. Arrieta was not finding success in the big leagues fast enough, and Baltimore’s then-current needs trumped its desire to wait him out.

“Sometimes it’s just a change of scenery, and it can be a bit of a wake-up call for guys when they get traded,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “I don’t know his situation specifically, but I think we look at him and we know he’s a handful.”

In a way it did shake up Arrieta. It prompted him to stop thinking so much and to focus more on the art of pitching, not the mechanics of it. His delivery became freer, his fastball ticked up an mph and the rest of his arsenal fell in line.

The results were immediate.

Arrieta pitched 13 innings and allowed one run in his first two starts with the Cubs, and he finished that season with eight more starts, allowing two runs in his final two games. Then, last season, he blossomed. He was dominant in 25 starts, striking out 9.6 hitters per nine innings and giving the Cubs a 2.53 ERA in 156.2 innings, earning a ninth-place finish in the Cy Young Award voting.

The numbers say he’s been just as good this season with his 2.22 ERA and 2.57 FIP entering Sunday. The difference is he is doing it for longer—he’s pitched 183 innings this year—and for a contending team trying to secure a postseason berth.

And that ninth-place finish last season should improve considering he’s been the undisputed ace of the staff even with Jon Lester’s $155 million pact from last offseason.

“I don’t know who has better stuff,” Maddon, who saw plenty of the Baltimore Arrieta when he managed the Tampa Bay Rays before this year, said of him. “The slider’s the best. The curveball, I want to know who has a better curveball. But, to me, the biggest difference is he knows where his fastball is going.”

With it and the rest of his weaponry, Arrieta has propelled himself into the upper echelon of National League starting pitchers, along with helping the Cubs and their faithful dream of breaking their World Series curse.

With that would come entirely new forms of questions, ones Arrieta would also be perfectly happy answering.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The hottest hitter on the planet has been massively overlooked.

But he did all he could to change that Saturday afternoon, breaking through the star power of his teammates to shine as bright as any player has this season.

Edwin Encarnacion was already on a tear during August when he went into Saturday’s game, and he put everyone who might have been sleeping on him this month on high alert that, at the moment, he might be the best of Toronto’s vaunted bunch.

Encarnacion hit three home runs, prompting his Canadian fans to throw their hats onto the field, and drove in nine runs in the Toronto Blue Jays’ 15-1 stomping of the Detroit Tigers at Rogers Centre, furthering his candidacy as the American League’s best player in August. Before Saturday’s barrage, the designated hitter led the Junior Circuit this month with a 227 wRC+, a .500 wOBA, a .797 slugging percentage and a 1.234 OPS, and he was second in isolated power (.419), according to Fangraphs.

“He was hot,” Tigers manager Brad Ausmus told reporters. “He was hot before we got here, and he certainly hasn’t cooled off.”

.@Encadwin all smiles after his #HatTrick today! 💪 pic.twitter.com/1zMRCpjbu7

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) August 29, 2015

On Saturday, he also extended his hitting streak to 24 games, the longest in Major League Baseball this season. He is hitting .400 (36-90) with 10 home runs and 34 RBI in that stretch to go with a .462 OBP, an .856 slugging percentage and a 1.318 OPS.

Since the All-Star break, Encarnacion went into Saturday hitting .351/.434/.684 with a 1.118 OPS. He knew not to press for power. He knew it would come, and when it finally did, he stole the show by making history as the only player in franchise history to have a three-homer, nine-RBI game.

“That’s going to come, I just have to keep taking good swings and making good contact and the power is going to come back,” Encarnacion told Shi Davidi of SportsNet earlier this month. “I don’t worry about that, I still have my power, just keep trying to hit the ball in the right spot.”

The thing is not many people knew exactly how hot Encarnacion was before he smoked a grand slam, a three-run homer and a two-run shot Saturday, making him the second Toronto player to ever record nine RBI in a single game.

The reason for the anonymity is because the Blue Jays are now loaded, and offensive outbursts like the one they had against Detroit are becoming commonplace for this team. Since Aug. 2, the Blue Jays have outscored their competition 153-70. That is an 83-run differential, and the club is a ridiculous 20-4 in that time to help them to the top spot in the AL East.

Further burying Encarnacion in the headlines is that he looks up in the lineup and there are three superstar players hitting in front of him—Troy Tulowitzki, Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista. And on every fifth game, he can look on the mound and see David Price, yet another established star to attract attention from Encarnacion.

Encarnacion credits the All-Star break with rejuvenating his season. He was dealing with nagging injuries before that, and in the 14 games before the break he hit .163 (8-for-49).

“Those four days were very good for me because I wasn’t 100 per cent with injuries in my groin and shoulder,” Encarnacion told Davidi. “Now I feel ready; I feel good and I can let it go.”

He certainly did that Saturday, as he has for the entire second half. While Price, Tulowitzki, Donaldson and Bautista get most of the publicity on this team, much of the production belongs to Encarnacion. As did this day that brought on a newly learned custom for the 32-year-old native Dominican.

“[Dioner Navarro] told me when they score three goals, I think, they do that,” Encarnacion told reporters of the fans throwing hats on the field, a tradition normally designated for hockey hat tricks. “It made me feel happy.”

It’s also making the Blue Jays ecstatic. His blazing bat allows those other three in front of him to see at least the occasional hittable pitch, because no one wants guys on base for the cleanup hitter, Encarnacion. And while the trades for Price and Tulowitzki and the MVP candidacy of Donaldson are what people focus on when discussing this team, Encarnacion has just forced his way into the international discussion about the Blue Jays. 

If that continues to be the case, he won’t be overlooked any longer, and he will help make the Blue Jays difficult to pick against come October.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

This season has now cranked right through the dog days of August, and per usual, they were more doggish for some than others.

The Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs have loved this month. The Washington Nationals and Jack Zduriencik have hated it. All baseball fans should have been joyed when Vin Scully decided to come back as an 88-year-old broadcaster. Nothing that might happen in the last days of the month will change any of that.

As this week ends and September opens its door, we can officially say the final stretch of this regular season is here. It’s exciting stuff.

But for now, let’s look backward. It can be just as interesting. Have trust. Plus, judging things in hindsight is always fun, right?

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