Kuzul

Say what you want about the problems with MLB‘s current playoff system. You can bemoan the addition of the Wild Card, or whine about how home field advantage for the World Series is determined by the All-Star Game, or complain that a best-of-five series is a poor way to determine which of two good teams is superior.

But when the first round kicks off on Wednesday, don’t pretend that you won’t be watching.

The postseason is when heroes are made. It’s when role players become household names, and stars aim to reach immortality. I know it sounds like a cheesy MLB Network commercial, but I defy any baseball fan to disagree.

In this slideshow are the 25 players who have had the best postseason careers in MLB history. Because this is about the career as a whole, I tried to make rankings relatively context-neutral, so a clutch hit or a walk-off homer didn’t matter as much as they would have in, say, a “top postseason moments” article.

If someone you think deserves to be here didn’t make the cut, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t considered—my original list had 75 names, meaning 50 nearly worthy players almost made it in.

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With the 2010 regular season coming to a close and the playoff picture starting to become a little clearer every day, there are some teams that will focus on free agency and which players they are going to bring back or which players they could possibly land this offseason.

One of those players that will hit the free agent market is third baseman Adrian Beltre, who seemed to reinvent himself this season as a member of the Boston Red Sox.

Beltre has hit .325 with 28 home runs and 102 runs batted in, his best combined numbers since his 2004 season as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Beltre isn’t the only third baseman that will be on the market. Here are 10 of the top third basemen that will be looked at in free agency.

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As the regular season wraps up, many teams and their fans are looking to October and, they hope, a World Series win. For other teams and their fans, they are looking to the offseason, hoping to make a few trades or free agent acquisitions to bounce them back into contention.

In some situations, these trades end up paying huge dividends, and not always for the party that was looking to get the major piece. At the same time, once in a while there’s a great free agent pickup at a bargain that launches a team into the playoffs and a World Series ring.

Starting with the 1999-2000 offseason through this past one, this slideshow notes the 20 best steals of the past decade. Some may have slipped by me, as there’s nowhere to easily find these unless one has an institutional memory of these things.

The years listed in the slides is the offseason that it took place in. i.e. a trade from November 2000 to March 2001 will be listed as 2000.

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This offseason, Cliff Lee and Carl Crawford will be headlining this year’s free-agent class.  Both players will be demanding major contracts, and both players might end up in New York.

Well, Lee will be in the Bronx, but the verdict is still out on Crawford.

For teams that can ill-afford to get the “Big Fish,” they must look at other options—the second-tier players.  Guys that can still contribute, but will be affordable to acquire. 

With the start of the offseason just five days away for the teams that failed to qualify for the playoffs, here are the 10 best “Buy Low” Candidates for this offseason.

You will not agree with all of my selections.  You will mention guys that I left off.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but this one is mine.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Let’s play ball. 

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The final week of the 2010 regular season has arrived and the Rangers and Twins have already popped the champagne.

The Rangers success can be attributed to finally having solid starting pitching. Nolan Ryan really does make whatever he touches turn into gold.

The Phillies have clinched at least a Wild Card position, while the Yanks and Rays are battling for the AL East crown. The loser gets the Wild Card.

Thinking back to April most experts wouldn’t expect the upstart Reds to be one game away from clinching their first playoff birth since 1995.

The Braves, Giants and Padres are fighting for two spots. The Giants effectively ended the Rockies’ season by winning two-of-three against the Rox over the weekend.

How big is the Giants and Padres season ending series now?

Buckle up, it’s crunch time.

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As the 2010 Major League Baseball regular season begins to wind down, it is time to start to think about candidates for the annual awards.

After years of hitters dominating the league, this season has been all about the resurgence of the pitcher.  That is why this year’s NL Cy Young race is filled with a lot of pitchers who have had great individual seasons.

Here are the top five candidates for the 2010 NL Cy Young award.

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With less than two weeks worth of games left on the Major League Baseball, the playoff picture is becoming clearer…sort of. Only one team has clinched a playoff spot, while three divisions consist of two or more teams that are deadlocked in an epic struggle for division supremacy. The end of the 2010 regular season is as compelling as ever.

What’s most interesting about the season is that there is the potential for no teams to finish with 100 wins. That would be the first time that has happened since 2007, an occurrence that doesn’t come along often. It goes to show how competitive baseball has been throughout both the American League and National League.

The races are firing up for the last time in 2010, so it is time to examine the magic numbers of each division leading team in baseball, and see where all the competitive teams can finish based on the strength of their schedules over the next week and a half. The hunt for October baseball is extremely compelling this year.

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Have you ever looked at an actor and thought how much he looked like a baseball player, football player or boxer?

Some bear such striking resemblances to a sports star that it is almost freaky.

I know in the movie Billy Crystal did for HBO called “*61”, I was overwhelmed with how much Barry Pepper looked like Roger Maris. It was just incredible.

That got me to thinking about which stars looked quite a bit like which actor.

Take a look with me and see if you agree about the resemblance.

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If you hit 30 home runs for a playoff team, everyone in baseball knows who you are.  If you win 20 games for a team that clinched a playoff berth a month ago, there will be no shortage of accolades.

But what if you are an above average hitter and play standout defense for a mediocre team?  What if your pitching is leaps and bounds ahead of your appallingly bad staff?  What if you got off to a slow start but were on fire in the second half?

Or, what if you are third -year player having a breakout season on a team full of over-paid and under-achieving superstars?

Then, in all likelihood, you will be unheralded.

Here is a list of the 20 most unheralded players in baseball.

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The advent of sabermetrics has changed the way we look at “clutch.”

“Situational hitting” is luck. “Inducing weak contact” is luck. “Performing under pressure” is luck. It’s all been proven with math and logic and regression analysis.

But screw that, because it’s a pennant race, and even the most logical stathead has subjective ideas about who he’d most want to see step to the plate with his favorite team’s season on the line.

Here is my 2010 All-Clutch team, comprised of the players who have demonstrated the best ability to perform when it counts. I tried to limit my list to players from contending teams, since they’re the only ones who really matter at this point.

Here’s to hoping we get to see one of these guys come up with a big hit this October.

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