Kuzul

This one photograph simultaneously captures one of the highest and lowest points of the 2013 MLB regular season.

On the right, you have Miguel Cabrera. Cabrera was putting together perhaps the greatest individual season in baseball history until hip and abdomen problems derailed his quest for greatness in late August. Despite a poor batting average and lack of power for the entire month of September, Cabrera is still one of the favorites to win the AL MVP.

On the left, you have Jhonny Peralta. Peralta was one of the bigger names implicated in the Biogenesis scandal that permeated every baseball conversation for months—and would return in full force if either Peralta or Nelson Cruz returned from their suspensions to help an AL playoff team.

But that’s only the beginning of the list of this season’s biggest winners and losers.

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Congratulations to the 11 MLB teams that entered play on Monday with at least a 25 percent chance of making the playoffs, but only five of them are actually contenders to win the 2013 World Series.

Not all World Series champions are created equal, but recent winners have a handful of things in common that suggest a possible formula for identifying the true candidates to win it all.

If you’re a fan of one of the teams identified as a pretender, feel free to convince yourself that the criteria lain out on the next slide are purely coincidental, and that your team is destined to break those trends.

While you’re doing that, the rest of us will be taking a look at why Yadier Molina and the St. Louis Cardinals might be the favorites to win their third World Series championship in a span of eight years.

*Unless otherwise cited, all statistics on the following slides are courtesy of Fangraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com and are accurate through the start of play on Monday, September 23.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox clinched the first berths into the 2013 MLB playoffs on Thursday afternoon, and it should only be another few days before the other four teams listed here join them.

But who are these shoe-ins for the postseason hoping to draw as an opponent in October?

Based on the strengths and weaknesses of each team and its potential counterparts, we’ve nominated one team in the thick of a playoff race that each projected division winner would possibly sweep right out of the playoffs.

For whom would Detroit’s potent offensive attack spell a complete disaster?

Is there anyone that the Cardinals are likely to beat?

Most intriguing of all: Is it possible that the Red Sox will be rooting for the Yankees for the next 10 days?

Nah, that would never happen.

*Unless otherwise cited, all statistics are courtesy of ESPN.com and Fangraphs.com and are accurate through the start of play on Thursday, September 19.

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Predicting the winners and nominating the top candidates for MLB‘s end of season awards is kind of our thing here at Bleacher Report. Since entering September there has been an updated stock watch for one award or another on what feels like an hourly basis.

But listing the top five candidates for each major award in order and predicting how many votes they’ll actually get? Well that’s something of a new wrinkle.

Just how close is the race between Jose Fernandez and Yasiel Puig for the NL Rookie of the Year? Conversely, will anyone actually steal a first place vote from Clayton Kershaw for the NL Cy Young?

Will the Manager of the Year awards simply go to the skippers from each league’s top team, or has Pittsburgh’s first winning season in two decades clinched the award for Clint Hurdle?

A few weeks ago, the only question about the AL MVP was whether Miguel Cabrera would get the maximum score possible or if a few writers might sheepishly cast first place votes for Chris Davis.

But now? Now there’s a pretty rock solid case and historical precedent for Mike Trout to win the award.

Before we get to all that, let’s get the party started with what might be an unpopular opinion about the American League Rookie of the Year race.

*Unless otherwise cited, all statistics are courtesy of Fangraphs.com and are accurate through the start of play on Monday, September 9.

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“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well you might find you just might find you get what you need.” – The Rolling Stones

That song may have been released three months after the pitching mounds were lowered in 1969, but that line seems pretty applicable as we look ahead to the 2013 MLB playoffs.

We’ll make the best of any situation we’re given, finding a way to create drama in any and every playoff series played this October.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t pining for a few ideal scenarios, though.

Based on the 10 teams currently projected to make the playoffs—though Tampa Bay certainly seems to be trying to change those projections based on their recent losing ways—here are 10 pairings that would be just a little extra special based on the history between the two teams.

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Have you ever wondered where your favorite MLB franchise stands in comparison against all the others?

I’m not talking about how your favorite team is doing this season. In fact, this year has almost nothing to do with this discussion.

I’m referring to things like team history—playoff appearances, World Series championships and Hall of Fame players—as well as revenue earned and farm systems.

Based on the past, the present and the future, which franchise is the greatest of all time? It’s an incredibly subjective question, but I did my best to make it objective by basing it entirely on numbers.

Obviously, the New York Yankees and their 27 World Series titles take the cake for first place, but the team in second place might surprise you even more than the team in last place. (The team in seventh place is by far the most surprising, though.)

On the following slide, I’ll explain the thought process and the numbers that went into the calculations. Beyond that slide, we’ll work our way from the least successful franchise all the way up to the Bronx Bombers.

Figures on the following slides taken from Baseball-Reference.com, BaseballHall.org, ESPN.com, Forbes.com and Statista.com.

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Final Score: Yankees 10 – 3 Red Sox

Try as they might, the Fenway faithful were unable to boo Alex Rodriguez and the Yankees into submission.

A-Rod went 2-for-4 with a walk, a run scored, two singles and a stolen base in his first trip to Boston this season, and the Yankees climbed to within 7.5 games of the Red Sox in the AL East standings with nine head-to-head games remaining.

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So you thought the trade rumors were going to end on July 31, did you?

We’ve only just begun to speculate!

Will Raul Ibanez finish the season in Seattle? What about Michael Young in Philadelphia? How does this whole waiver process even work anyway?

There’s literally no harm in placing players on revocable waivers, so general managers like Alex Anthopoulos take full advantage of the opportunity to determine a player’s market value by placing virtually their entire team on waivers every season.

As players clear waivers and some teams fall further out of contention, while others become desperate to find that final piece to make a playoff push, it’ll be as if the non-waiver trade deadline never happened.

*Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are courtesy of Fangraphs and are accurate through the start of play on Monday, August 5.

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If the MLB season ended today, your NL MVP would probably be Joey Votto, and your AL MVP would indisputably be Miguel Cabrera.

Fortunately, the season doesn’t end today. We have four months left during which injuries or prolonged cold streaks could drastically alter the voting for the most popular end-of-season award.

Should those favorites drift back to the pack, there are five dark horses in each league who would gladly find a home for the award above their fireplace.

Read on to find out how we got to that number and who those candidates are.

*All statistics are courtesy of ESPN.com and FanGraphs.com and are accurate through the start of play on Monday, May 27.

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Keep it right here for all the live updates of Tuesday night’s matchup between Stephen Strasburg’s Washington Nationals and Matt Cain’s San Francisco Giants. Settle in with your favorite snacks and age appropriate beverages as we find out if either ace will single-handedly lead his team to victory.

SCORE UPDATE: Nationals 2 – 1 Giants, Bot 6th

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