September baseball is right around the corner, and several teams still have excellent opportunities to make a playoff run. However, not all teams will be as lucky, and some recent slumps by the Washington Nationals, Minnesota Twins and Tampa Bay Rays might be too much to overcome.
Only a handful of games separate teams vying for wild-card spots, and most of those teams play each other at least one more time the rest of the way. Look for the teams with the most consistencies slowly begin to make a move to the top.
The teams in this list have some of the more obvious flaws of the current wild-card contenders and also have difficult schedules for the rest of the season. Some of these teams have underperformed this year, while all have suffered difficult losses in recent weeks that have significantly hurt their chances of gaining ground.
The slides ahead will discuss the flaws of those teams and explain why each squad will be unable to right the ship in time to make the postseason.