Preview/Prediction

There's nothing quite like September baseball, when it involves teams contending for a spot to play in the MLB postseason.

Some teams are slowly separating themselves from the pack, while others look to find themselves in a dogfight from here on out.

The stretch run is here for the 2015 MLB season and the playoffs are fast approaching, but it's never too early to start looking ahead to the offseason.

Whether a team is gearing up for a run at a World Series title or still in the early stages of rebuilding, all 30 clubs are faced with at least a few big decisions over the course of the offseason.

The following is an early look at what figures to be each team's biggest offseason decision, and those decisions were broken into the following six categories:

There is roughly one month remaining in the 2015 MLB season, and the postseason picture is really starting to take shape.

The Kansas City Royals, New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers all look like locks to win their respective divisions, but the other three are still very much up for grabs.

The Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees battling it out in the AL East is the tightest race at the moment, and their weekend matchup will be a big one in determining who comes out on top.

Spoiler alert: This week's edition of "Fact or Fiction" is chock-full of East Coast bias.

It's not intentional, mind you, but teams in close proximity to the Atlantic Ocean are the ones making all the noise this week. That's just how the rumor mill, and speculation in general, rolls sometimes. And none of it pertains to how things will play out down the stretch in 2015. It's all with an eye on 2016 and beyond.

Back in early August we played "Future Stardom Fact or Fiction" with this year's standout rookie class, and the piece generated some good discussion and debate among readers.

Now that rosters have expanded and several more highly regarded prospects have made their way to the majors, let's revisit that idea with this year's 10 biggest September call-ups.

First, we need to establish what it means to be a star player.

In a typical week, the rumor mill churns enough for us to delve into five potential trades that make sense for both clubs involved. 

But the mill apparently decided to take a breather for Labor Day, because outside of the chatter surrounding New York's Matt Harvey and innings limits, things have been relatively quiet. That doesn't mean we don't have any potential deals to discuss, though.

We'll look at four potential deals this week, including two that would find The Dark Knight himself toeing the rubber at a ballpark other than Citi Field.

It's good to be David Price.

Ever since the lefty ace landed north of the border, the Toronto Blue Jays have been the scariest team in baseball. And when the season ends, the free-agent to-be is going to make a mint.

Surveying the upcoming free-agent class, Price is far from the only big-name big leaguer who's set to cash in. While there's plenty of baseball left to be played this season, it's not too early to jump ahead and predict where some of the most prominent names will end up based on 2015 performance and team needs in 2016 and beyond.

It's here, it's finally here!

After weeks, if not months, of talking about teams gearing up and preparing for the stretch run, the last leg of the MLB regular season is officially upon us. While some teams have one eye on 2016 and the other on the chance to play spoiler, the bulk of baseball remains within shouting distance of the playoffs.

But as we're about to learn, all stretch runs aren't created equal when it comes to contenders.

Throughout much of the MLB season, two teams have dominated the competition in their respective leagues. The St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals may be heading into the final month of the regular season as the hottest clubs in baseball, but there's much to be sorted out in the divisional and wild-card races before the postseason gets underway in October. 

In predicting how the postseason picture will shape up with a month to go, three primary factors were taken into consideration: 

While the Kansas City Royals have crushed the competition in the American League Central, there's still a lot left to be decided in the other five division battles and the two wild-card chases.

Aside from the Royals, no division leader has more than a 6.5-game edge, and the AL wild-card picture, in particular, remains especially murky. In the process of setting 2015 MLB playoff odds, four primary factors were taken into consideration: