Cincinnati Reds

Joey Votto, nor any of the Cincinnati Reds, needed a hit to cut their magic number to seven on Monday afternoon as the St. Louis Cardinals were shut out by the Florida Marlins in a make-up game played due to an early August rain-out.

Lucky seven.

Starting in Feburary, when spring training begins, MLB experts and fans begin their preseason predictions by selecting Division, MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year winners.

But there are many twists and turns during an MLB season.

Most of the time these predictions go sour (unless you're me who correctly predicted all four AL playoff teams and at least two NL playoff teams—once in a while a person gets lucky with these things). 

With just over a week remaining in the season, here are five storylines MLB experts and fans didn't see coming.

"It ain’t over ‘til it’s over." Who said that? Was it Yogi Berra?

There is so much truth in those six words.

Ask Mike Weaver who knocked out Heavyweight champion John Tate (may he rest in peace) with seconds to go in the fight after trailing badly on all score cards.

Ask the 1993 Houston Oilers who led the Buffalo Bills 35-3 early in the second half, only to lose 41-38 in overtime.

 
The 2010 MLB season has been the year of the pitcher. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been plenty of elite performances on offense.
 
Home run totals may be down across the board, but there have been plenty of players that have a legitimate argument for MVP.
 
The list is very exclusive—all of these players should receive at least a few MVP votes. Some of these players have carried their respective mediocre team for the majority of the season. Others are leading the way into the postseason.

Twelve is the magic number the Reds have at the moment to garner the National League Central Division title, and with it their first playoff berth in—guh—15 years! And, with a 7-game lead on the St. Louis Cardinals, the Reds are in a good place..

At the beginning of the month, the Reds called up phenom prospect Yonder Alonso to help provide some power off the bench.

Alonso is one of the more ballyhooed prospects to come up through the Reds' farm system in recent memory, and the 7th overall pick from 2008 put together a productive year in Louisville this year (.296 with 12 homers and 56 RBIs in 101 games).

All hail the Jay Bruce express! Hop on the bandwagon now, because it’s filling up quick.
 
Bruce has been up-and-down all season long for the Reds…shoot, for his whole career. Yet the offense had never gone through an extended lull this season until Bruce went down.
 
The Reds offense had become stale over the past two weeks. Having two-and-a-half healthy outfielders will do that to a team (Chris Heisey had been playing banged up).
 

By the grace of God, the Reds won the series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, instead of losing it 2-1.

Out of 16 pitchers on the roster, is Coco Cordero the only one who can be entrusted to close a game?

 If so, we should just hand the Central Division trophy over to the Cardinals right now.

"It's not something I'm going to push at this point," Jay Bruce said Friday about his strained oblique. "I've taken the process this far. I'm going to see it through. When I come back, I want to be 100 percent ready to come back—not 90 percent, not 80 percent."

Read that real carefully.

Look at the calender, too. It points to September, and it has been a very productive year for the team, but by this point, no one is 100 percent.

No doubt the majority of Pittsburghers have moved on from the Pirates for the year, and many Reds fans are getting psyched for the Bengals on Sunday, but there is very important business to take care of this weekend at Great American Ballpark.

The Reds return home licking their wounds from the horrific 1-6 road trip, one in which they showed a great deal of lethargy and fatigue.