Opinion

Jay Bruce and Joey Votto are not yet household names among baseball fans. Soon, they will be.

In about a week's time the Cincinnati Reds will be playing in the National League playoffs for the first time in 15 years as the 2010 NL Central Division champions.

National pundits are piling on the Tampa Bay Rays after two of its star players, Evan Longoria and David Price, expressed displeasure at the team attracting only 12,446 fans to their Monday night game against the Baltimore Orioles, a possible playoff-clincher.

That's pretty much the typical Baltimore Orioles game on a school-year Monday night at home. If the Rays were still a bad team, they'd be lucky to draw 9,000 on that day against that team.

Felix Hernandez is your 2010 American League Cy Young Award winner...if only it were that easy.

In reality, it should be that easy.

After going eight innings, giving up one run on five hits and two walks while striking out five, Hernandez got the all-important erroneous stat. 

The stat that for some reason voters and baseball fans feel is nerdy to overlook.

Hernandez got the win and is now 13-12. Happy?

With the regular season about to end, playoff spots are getting filled by eight of the 30 MLB teams who compete each season.

For players on the Yankees and Phillies, October is a familiar time of year but for many it will remain a mystery.

The final chapter hasn't been written on the 2010 baseball season, but as a relatively young Reds fan who doesn't have strong memories of the last successful teams, it has already been a banner year.

For years, baseball was always about watching people on other teams perform in the big moment.

Other fanbases collected treasured memories, whereas we just got the occasional June walkoff home run, and Wily Tavares.

While the Texas Rangers celebrated with beer and champagne showers after clinching the American League West Saturday night, they did so without left fielder Josh Hamilton. Although Hamilton, who has been out of action since September 4th with two fractured ribs, was in the stadium and in uniform during the Rangers clincher over the Oakland Athletics, he quickly disappeared to the training room to change after joining in the onfield celebration with his teammates.

Even as the defending champion Yankees finish a season that will see them win well over 90 games and possibly a division title, this team is hardly invincible and cannot even be considered on the same level as last year's juggernaut.

The first and most glaring difference between this team and last is a serious lack of depth in the rotation.

While CC Sabathia has had a Cy Young-quality season, he has been without any support in the rotation for months with no real signs of a turnaround out there.

The Atlanta Braves are limping towards the finish line and on Tuesday they got some news that’s really not helping their cause.

According to MLB.com’s Mark Bowman, via Twitter, Braves 2B/3B Martin Prado will be done for the season with a hip pointer and torn oblique muscle.

The Mets are currently 76-79. Including tonight's game (in progress), they have seven games remaining: four against the Brewers and three against the Nationals.

If the Mets were in a heated pennant race, they would have lucked out considering their competition over this next week. But since they were eliminated from playoff contention a while ago, I would now like to see if the team can at least manage to finish .500.

So that begs the question: can a .500 finish be considered a success for this team?