Best Slideshows - Team

Sure, they have a possible Triple Crown candidate in Joey Votto—and fellow All-Stars Brandon Phillips and Scott Rolen. The pitching staff has been solid, if not spectacular, led by the most consistent pitcher in the majors: Bronson Arroyo.
 
But the glue that keeps this team together is the bench. They are unsung heroes that have proven to be the WD-40 to the Reds' machine when it gets a bit rusty. The players that were expected to be afterthoughts have instead been essential to the Reds success.
 

The announcement was made yesterday that Nationals rookie phenom Stephen Strasburg is once again heading to the disabled list with a forearm strain.

After going on the disabled list in late July with an inflamed right shoulder, Strasburg was making just his third start since returning from that injury when he was pulled with the forearm injury.

The 2010 season has been kind to the Baltimore Orioles minor-league system.

This is great news, because the 2010 season has been a plague for the big league club, who aside from snagging manager Buck Showalter, has failed to incite any real excitement.

As such, the race for Orioles Minor League Player of the Year honors is heating up, and for the first time in a good long while, there are actually more than a few promising nominees.

Manny Ramirez's days with the Los Angeles Dodgers seem to be coming to an end, as the general consensus around baseball is that he will end up on waivers early this week. 

Monday was the first opportunity the Dodgers had to put Ramirez on waivers because it was the first business day after Ramirez came off the disabled list, but they are not expected to do so.

Recently, Major League Baseball has been buzzing about the future of several managers. From Tony LaRussa to Joe Girardi, these men are starting to make more headlines than this year's looming free agent class. 

There could now even be a "Joe Torre Watch" as he is one of the most prized managers in the game and could be relocating this offseason. He has a few destinations to choose from.

In a recent CNNSI.com column, Tom Verducci posits that Josh Hamilton is now the best player in baseball. The premise for this supposition is laid out nicely in the following passage from Verducci's column:

At the beginning of August, the Giants trailed the Padres by one game and led the Wild Card race.

They came off a month where they won 20 of their 28 games. They led the majors in runs scored.

But since then they are 7-8 and have fallen to five games back in the division. Now they are on the outside looking in on the playoff picture.

What happened? Three things.

Power outage:

The signing of Christian Yelich came last night for the Marlins although it didn't receive the hype of a Bryce Harper or Stephen Strasburg signing.

Yelich signed for $1.7 million as the deal got done with minutes left until the midnight deadline. Yelich was the Marlins' first-round pick in the 2010 First-Year Player Draft.

Taken out of Westlake High School in Westlake Village, California, Yelich stands at 6'4" and weighs 190 pounds.

The San Diego Padres are four games up on the San Francisco Giants in the National League's Western Division and they're doing it all without second baseman David Eckstein and right-hander Chris Young.

So far, the Padres have been able to stem the tide without Eckstein and have pitched better than most thought without their ace. Just when it looked like they might be without both players until deep into September, they might get both back sooner than anyone thought.

In the pre-season it was Roy Halladay.  For the first three months of the year it was Ubaldo Jimenez.  Josh Johnson took over for a little while, but as of now there can be no doubt.

The St. Louis Cardinals' Adam Wainwright is now your front-runner for the National League Cy Young Award.

Remember just under two months ago, when Jimenez won his 14th start of the season to run his record to 13-1 with a 1.15 ERA?