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Having concluded its tour around the infield at third base, the B/R MLB 300 now heads to the outfield. First up are the top center fielders of the 2016 Major League Baseball season.

There’s no shortage of talent in center field, so we’re sticking with our usual allotment of 25 players. Our scoring system acknowledges that center field is an important defensive position while also recognizing that center fielders are also well-rounded offensive players:

• Hitting: 25 points
• Power: 25 points
• Baserunning: 20 points
• Defense: 30 points

Before we move on, here’s a reminder that this year’s B/R MLB 300 is different from past versions in a key way. Rather than use the events of 2016 to project for 2017, the focus is strictly on 2016. Think of these rankings as year-end report cards.

For more on how the scoring and ranking work, read ahead.

Begin Slideshow

It’s time for the B/R MLB 300 to take a break from bats and gloves and focus on the arms. First up: starting pitchers.

There are typically 150 starting pitchers in Major League Baseball at any given moment. And while 2016 hasn’t been a banner year for great starting pitching the way the previous few years were, there are still many good starters out there. Our list covers 80 of them, who are scored like so:

• Control: 30 points
• Whiffability: 25 points
• Hittability: 25 points
• Workload: 20 points

Before we move on, here’s a reminder that this year’s B/R MLB 300 is different from past versions in a key way. Rather than use the events of 2016 to project for 2017, the focus is strictly on 2016. Think of these rankings as year-end report cards.

For more on how the scoring and ranking work, read ahead.

Begin Slideshow

After checking in with the game’s top shortstops, the B/R MLB 300 now heads to its final stop on the infield with a look at the top third basemen in Major League Baseball for the 2016 season.

The hot corner may be packed with more talent than any other position, but we’re going to narrow our list to 25 players. They have many different talents, but the scoring system for them reflects how third base is still an offense-oriented position:

• Hitting: 30 points
• Power: 30 points
• Baserunning: 15 points
• Defense: 25 points

Before we move on, here’s a reminder that this year’s B/R MLB 300 is different from past versions in a key way. Rather than use the events of 2016 to project for 2017, the focus is strictly on 2016. Think of these rankings as year-end report cards.

For more on how the scoring and ranking work, read ahead.

Begin Slideshow

After a stop at second base, the B/R MLB 300 will now go to the left side of the infield and check in with the top shortstops in Major League Baseball.

As with first base and second base, the list ahead features the names of 25 shortstops. The scoring system for them reflects how shortstop is an extremely important defensive position with low offensive standards:

• Hitting: 25 points
• Power: 25 points
• Baserunning: 20 points
• Defense: 30 points

Before we move on, here’s a reminder that this year’s B/R MLB 300 is different from past versions in a key way. Rather than use the events of 2016 to project for 2017, the focus is strictly on 2016. Think of these rankings as year-end report cards.

For more on how the scoring and ranking work, read ahead.

Begin Slideshow

The Washington Nationals are your 2016 NL East champions, having clinched the division Saturday night. Their only worry right now is how much champagne stings when it gets in their eyes.

So, it’s up to us to worry about their path through the National League playoffs.

This doesn’t involve taking anything away from the season they’ve had, mind you. The Nats‘ 6-1 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park—which combined with the New York Mets‘ 10-8 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies to wrap up the NL East race—was their 90th with eight games to go. They have a shot of making it three 95-win teams in five years.

Even in getting this far, the Nats have made it look easy. There were only six days all season in which they didn’t have first place all to themselves. They’ve taken a division that many thought would be the domain of the reigning NL champion Mets and were a wire-to-wire juggernaut.

An MVP-caliber season out of free-agent signee Daniel Murphy has helped. So has a Cy Young-caliber season out of Max Scherzer, a free-agent signee from a year ago. Wilson Ramos, Trea Turner and Tanner Roark have also starred. Dusty Baker has been as advertised as the cure for what ailed the team under former manager Matt Williams in 2015.

But like an elephant and an elephant seal, making it through a 162-game season and making it through the postseason are two completely different animals.

Doing the former doesn’t guarantee anything with the latter, and the latest odds at FanGraphs don’t favor the Nats as World Series favorites as much as the NL’s other two division leaders:

• Chicago Cubs: 17.8%
• Los Angeles Dodgers: 15.3%
• Washington Nationals: 12.4%

It’s not surprising that the Cubs are the big favorites to win it all. All they’ve done this season is win 98 games and outscore their opponents by something like 1,000 runs. They’re good. Really good.

But the Dodgers over the Nationals? This despite the fact the Nationals have won more games? This despite the fact they would therefore have home-field advantage in the likely inevitable matchup between the two clubs in the National League Division Series?

It’s not actually that hot of a take.

With a 12-9 record in September, the Nationals aren’t backing into the postseason. But it is fair to say they’re stumbling in, having been tripped up by a roster with increasingly noticeable cracks in it.

Bryce Harper is the big one. There’s a he-said, they-said thing going on between Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated and the Nationals over the state of Harper’s health. Verducci has circled shoulder woes as reasons for Harper’s plummet from last year’s MVP-winning season on two occasions, most recently this week. The Nats have pushed back, with Baker telling Byron Kerr of MASN Sports: “I don’t know where he’s getting that from.”

Injury or no injury, though, Harper’s not right. His .814 OPS and 24 homers mark a pretty good “bad” season, but he entered Saturday with a .761 OPS and 15 homers since April and, even more concerning, just a .630 OPS and one homer in September.

With Harper struggling, the recent news on Murphy looms that much larger. The veteran second baseman is hitting .347 with an NL-best .987 OPS, but the Nats have shut him down with (resists urge to write “bum butt”) with a mild strain in his buttocks. Baker hasn’t promised Murphy will be ready for October.

“I’m not a doctor. I don’t know,” Baker told Bill Ladson of MLB.com. “[The trainers] are doing everything they can to try to alleviate the pain and get rid of whatever is in there. We have a capable [training] staff here. I’m glad he didn’t do it any worse.”

Washington’s lineup is thus dealing with the possibility of having Harper and Murphy at less than full strength in October. In the context of this being the No. 4 run-scoring offense in the NL, that’s not a big deal. In the context of the Nats offense being below average in the second half, it’s a big deal.

Meanwhile, the jury remains out on Stephen Strasburg. He’s been terrific when healthy in 2016, putting up a 3.60 ERA and striking out 11.2 batters per nine innings. But he’s out with a strained flexor mass in his right arm and has only progressed as far as playing catch. His return is up in the air.

On the bright side, Scherzer and Roark are an excellent one-two punch. And with Mark Melancon having cemented a closer role that Jonathan Papelbon routinely bungled, the starters have a good bullpen backing them up. Asking the Nats to win a short postseason series on the strength of their pitching isn’t asking too much.

But it won’t be easy.

Assuming the Nationals come up against the Dodgers in the NLDS, Scherzer and Roark will match up against the formidable trio of Clayton Kershaw, Rich Hill and Kenta Maeda. And as good as Washington’s bullpen is, the Dodgers’ pen is arguably the best in the entire National League. Los Angeles is also going into October with a red-hot offense. Only the Boston Red Sox have been more productive in the second half.

Even if the Nationals were to survive the Dodgers, their reward would likely be a date with the Cubs. The matchup problems would be deja vu all over again. It would be Scherzer and Roark against Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester and Kyle Hendricks. It would be Washington’s Melancon-led bullpen against Chicago’s Aroldis Chapman-led bullpen. And it would be Washington’s weakened offense against arguably the only NL offense better than the Dodgers.

As ominous as things sound, however, it can always be worse.

Injuries haven’t completely robbed the Nationals of their best qualities, a la the Cleveland Indians and their starting pitching. Strasburg may be out of commission, but even a reasonably healthy Murphy should be considered a threat after what he did last October. Let’s not forget that Harper has also been energized by October before, wreaking havoc in the 2014 NLDS.

And above all, there’s this: After failing as heavy favorites in 2012 and 2014, maybe being underdogs for a change is just what the Nationals need.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

With catchers and first basemen in the bag, the B/R MLB 300 now turns its attention to second base.

We have 25 second basemen to get to, and this year we’ll be scoring them differently than in the past. Second base has experienced a huge power spike, setting records for home runs and slugging percentage, so the power category looms larger this year:

• Hitting: 30 points
• Power: 30 points
• Baserunning: 15 points
• Defense: 25 points

Before we move on, here’s a reminder that this year’s B/R MLB 300 is different from past versions in a key way. Rather than use the events of 2016 to project for 2017, the focus is strictly on 2016. Think of these rankings as year-end report cards.

For more on how the scoring and ranking work, read ahead.

Begin Slideshow

As the National League continues to leave no doubt about who its World Series favorite is, the American League may finally be settling on one of its own.

The Boston Red Sox.

The Red Sox are rolling, folks. Hanley Ramirez’s dramatic home run last week kicked off a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees, and they’ve begun this week by taking three straight from the Baltimore Orioles.

The latest is Wednesday’s 5-1 triumph. Clay Buchholz pitched seven innings of one-run ball. The Red Sox took the lead on a two-out, bases-loaded error in the sixth and padded it when Andrew Benintendi’s name was plucked from the “Clutch Red Sox Hitter” hat and a three-run homer materialized.

It wasn’t long ago that the AL East race looked like one nobody was going to run away with. The Red Sox, Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees were all very much in it and armed to the teeth for a bloody gladiator fight that would take a toll on everyone.

Instead, there are the Red Sox at 14-5 in September and 88-64 overall. They are Maximus standing unharmed amid the wreckage and asking if we’re entertained.

It’s not just the seven wins in a row. Nor is it even the breathing room they have. They lead the Blue Jays by five, the Orioles by six and the Yankees by 8.5. FanGraphs gives them a 98.1 percent chance of winning the division. Impressive, but it’s not the most resonant thing about the Red Sox right now.

Nope. That would be just how darn ready for the postseason they’re looking.

The Red Sox haven’t been a bad team at any point in 2016, but they’ve spent the bulk of it flexing one or two big muscles while trying to hide puny, undeveloped muscles. In the beginning, they had offense but no pitching. In the middle, they got some starting pitching just as their offense finally slumped. Shortly after that, their bullpen fell apart.

That last point brings us to one of the biggest factors in Boston’s September surge. As Alex Speier of the Boston Globe observed, it’s thus far been a historic month for the club’s relievers:

And the band played on with two more scoreless innings Wednesday. Make it a 0.88 ERA in September, a figure that all the key members—Craig Kimbrel, Koji Uehara, Brad Ziegler, Joe Kelly, Junichi Tazawa, Matt Barnes, et al.—share the credit for.

Meanwhile, Boston’s starters are doing well in their own right.

They have a 3.45 ERA in September, and a 3.59 ERA in the second half. Rick Porcello might be the AL Cy Young favorite with 21 wins and a 3.08 ERA, and is rolling with a 2.34 ERA in his last 11 starts. David Price has a 2.84 ERA in his last 11 starts. The waters beyond them are murky, but it’s saying something that there are solid arguments to make for Buchholz, Eduardo Rodriguez, Drew Pomeranz and a potentially healthy Steven Wright as the team’s third-best starter.

As for that offense, well, it just keeps on ticking.

The Red Sox have scored at least five runs in all seven of their consecutive wins, and 121 total in September. With either Benintendi or Chris Young in left field, Red Sox manager John Farrell must be very pleased knowing that only one of his regulars (Travis Shaw) has an OPS under .799.

This is a very complete team. And they know it.

“I think we know, and I think everybody else knows, you’ve got to play 27 outs to beat us—and we keep that mindset,” Mookie Betts, the possible AL MVP front-runner, said recently to MLB.com’s Paul Hagen. “We’re never out of it.”

And as the Red Sox get hotter, the competition both within and without the AL East only seems to be getting weaker. 

If the season ended today, the Red Sox would play the Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series. They’re playing well but are running out of arms faster than the Black Knight in a fight with King Arthur. Corey Kluber still lives, but Carlos Carrasco is done for the season and Danny Salazar is fighting to return from an arm injury.

The Texas Rangers loom as the bigger roadblock to the World Series for the Red Sox. And while theirs don’t involve any backbreaking injuries, they have pitching woes of their own. They entered Wednesday with a 5.63 ERA in September, no thanks to co-aces Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish combining for an 8.59 ERA.

In a seemingly related story, the same number-crunching system that shows a 98.1 percent chance of the Red Sox winning the AL East also gives the Red Sox a 19.0 percent chance to win the World Series. That’s the highest of any team in the American League. And the way they’re shaping up, that’s not so hard to believe.

What’s harder to believe is the Red Sox have a higher chance of winning it all than even the Chicago Cubs, which the odds state they do. These are the same Cubs that have won 97 games and are a powerhouse in every conceivable way. There’s supposedly a goat-related hex on them, but they’re at least as well equipped to beat their curse as the Red Sox were back when they popularized beating curses back in 2004.

However, a matchup with the Cubs in the World Series is a bridge the Red Sox can worry about crossing when they get to it. For now, they can enjoy knowing they have a team that’s turned getting there at all into a realistic possibility.

The Red Sox have been searching and searching and searching for that team. They’ve finally found it.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

After getting started at first base, it’s time for the B/R MLB 300 to backtrack 90 feet to check in with the guys behind the dish.

Due to the position’s relative lack of star power, our list of the top catchers for 2016 features only 20 names. And despite Gary Sanchez’s best efforts, many of them are complicit in the position’s low offensive standards. As a counter to that, our scoring system acknowledges that catcher is by far the most important defensive position:

• Hitting: 25 points
• Power: 30 points
• Baserunning: 5 points
• Defense: 40 points

This is the same scoring pattern used in the first three iterations of the MLB 300, but there is one major difference. Rather than use the events of 2016 to project for 2017, this year the focus is strictly on 2016. Think of these rankings as year-end report cards.

For more on how the scoring and rankings work, read ahead. 

Begin Slideshow

Hello and welcome to the first stop on the Bleacher Report MLB 300: first base.

The rankings ahead are the first in a series that will lead to the top 300 players in Major League Baseball for 2016. They feature 25 first basemen, most of whom abide by the heavy-hitting tradition of first base. As such, hitting talents account for the majority of the 100 possible points each player can earn:

• Hitting: 35 points
• Power: 40 points
• Baserunning: 10 points
• Defense: 15 points

This is the same scoring pattern that the first three iterations of the MLB 300 used, but there is one major difference this year. Rather than use the events of 2016 to project for next season, this year the focus is strictly on 2016. Think of these rankings as year-end report cards.

For more on how the scoring and ranking work, read ahead. 

Begin Slideshow

The injury bug has been trying to block the New York Mets from returning to the World Series in 2016. Credit the Mets for putting up a strong resistance.

But the fight has finally been lost.

Jacob deGrom was set to return from a forearm injury Sunday, thereby restoring a power arm to a diminished starting rotation. So much for that. Rather than taking the mound against the Minnesota Twins, Barry M. Bloom of MLB.com reported deGrom likely won’t pitch again this season.

“Jacob has had issues with the ulnar nerve in his right elbow, which is not unusual after Tommy John surgery, even during the time after that surgery,” Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said, per Bloom. “He will not pitch tomorrow. I think it’s unlikely he will pitch the rest of the season. We’ll see.”

The right-hander didn’t have any trouble in a Friday bullpen session, but he felt pain after making a throw while shagging balls during batting practice Friday. That convinced the Mets to shut him down, and it’s likely to lead to offseason surgery.

So it goes for the Mets. Losing a pitcher with a 2.74 career ERA fits with a trend of bad breaks that, as James Wagner of the New York Times highlights here, has all but destroyed their Opening Day roster:

The bottom list may not include Steven Matz, but that might just be a matter of time. The Mets have not yet offered a return date from a bum shoulder for the young left-hander.

According to ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark, they haven’t been brimming with optimism:

If Matz can’t return, at least the Mets still have Noah Syndergaard and Bartolo Colon for the stretch run and the postseason. But they only have Seth Lugo, Robert Gsellman and Gabriel Ynoa after them. Even if Matz does return, his workload will surely be limited.

The good news is deGrom‘s absence and Matz‘s up-in-the-air status don’t necessarily kill New York’s chances of making the postseason.

The Mets hold a two-game lead on the St. Louis Cardinals for the National League‘s second wild-card spot. The Cardinals are not playing well, and the Mets have the advantage of playing only one winning team, the Miami Marlins, in the closing weeks of the regular season.

Plus, the bad vibes shouldn’t mask how well the Mets are playing. They’ve won nine of their last 12 games.

Assuming the Mets do indeed close on a wild-card berth, they’d be in good shape to take the next step. They’re on track to play the San Francisco Giants, who are backing into October as the NL’s worst second-half team. The Mets have Syndergaard, an electric pitcher who happens to be red-hot, slated to start the Wild Card Game on Oct. 5.

Even if the Mets get past the Wild Card Game, they’ll have these guys waiting for them:

At 94-53, the Chicago Cubs have already clinched the NL Central and are running away in the race for the NL’s top seed. They’ll await the winner of the Wild Card Game, ready to unleash the league’s most well-rounded attack in their quest to end their 108-year championship drought.

Of course, it was the Mets who pushed the drought from 107 to 108 when they swept the Cubs in last year’s National League Championship Series. Daniel Murphy, now with the Washington Nationals, had a big hand in that, but Chicago’s inability to handle New York’s power pitching was the deciding factor.

Should the Mets and Cubs meet again in this year’s NLDS, the Mets won’t be able to go back to the power pitcher. The only dominant pitcher from last year’s NLCS still at full health is Syndergaard. If he pitches in the Wild Card Game, he would only be available for one start in the NLDS.

It’s true what they say about nobody being able to predict baseball. And that may go double for postseason baseball—an entirely different animal.

But sorry, it’s hard to imagine the Mets beating the Cubs in a five-game series with just one start from Syndergaard. The Cubs would have a better offense, a better defense and arguably a better bullpen than the Mets. Getting just one start from Syndergaard would render the Mets unable to match up with Chicago’s starting foursome of Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks and John Lackey.

If the Mets were to pull off a miracle and survive into the NLCS, they’d run into that same matchup problem against either the Los Angeles Dodgers or Washington Nationals. The Dodgers have an excellent trio in Clayton Kershaw, Rich Hill and Kenta Maeda. The Nationals have lost Stephen Strasburg, but they still have Max Scherzer, Tanner Roark and Gio Gonzalez.

Thinking this far ahead may be pointless. Having Syndergaard lined up for a likely matchup against the Giants in the NL Wild Card Game gives the Mets a good shot at advancing, but it wouldn’t be automatic. The Giants have Madison Bumgarner lined up for Oct. 5, and we all know what he can do under pressure.

If deGrom had been able to return Sunday, it would be possible to paint a more optimistic picture of the Mets’ future. His presence likely wouldn’t have impacted the Wild Card Game, but the Mets could have used him twice against the Cubs. Under those circumstances, we could be looking at the Mets as just the team to challenge Chicago’s status as the obvious favorites in the National League.

But now there’s no arguing with the odds. FanGraphs gives the Mets a 13.0 percent chance of going to the NLCS, a 4.2 percent chance of going to the World Series and a 1.6 percent chance of winning it all.

The odds say it’s not happening, and with deGrom out of the picture, they may even be a little generous.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com