Rankings/List

Over the next week or two I will be taking a division-by-division look at every team’s closer situation.  Who is closing now?  Who is next in line?  Who could get a look down the line?  Let’s kick things off with the NL East:

The Atlanta Braves are once again looking like a championship-caliber team. The Braves have held first place in the National League East for nearly three months and show no signs of slowing down. In fact, they are showing signs of improvement. (see: Derrek Lee)

Atlanta's success has undoubtedly been a 25-man effort, but that does not mean that the incredible individual performances should go unnoticed. Here are the handful of Braves that are amongst the top candidates to win some of Major League Baseball's most coveted awards.

In sports or life, as an individual or as a team once you become a champion is beyond satisfying.

After many failures through dedication and hard work the sense of relief must be surreal.

The 2010 Major League Baseball season is being recognized in a variety of different ways. 

Most are calling it the "Year of the Pitcher." Pitching is in style again. The 2010 season has not only seen a great deal of refined pitching, but also no-hitters from Ubaldo Jimenez, Dallas Braden, Roy Halladay, Edwin Jackson, and Matt Garza.

Braden and Halladay's efforts were good for perfect games. The revitalization of Major League pitching has thematically been the talk of the season.

There are many arguments as to why a pitcher deserves to win both the Cy Young award and the MVP award, but perhaps the most important issue revolves around what a pitcher brings to a ball club.

What I mean by that is if you had to put a franchise tag on one individual on a baseball team, a majority of the time (if not all the time), that nods goes towards a starting pitcher.

There’s a reason for that, but we'll get to that later.

In the old days, ballplayers were expected to go out there and fight tooth and nail for all nine innings, or however long it took to beat the opposing team to dust. Come hell or high water, you got your hind parts out there and played.

But no longer. Even without injuries, nobody ever plays every inning of every game any more.

In baseball, the art of being able to recognize and take pitches out of the zone is key to success. Although hitting statistics like home runs and batting average are glorified, walks greatly contribute to wins.

Here are the five least disciplined hitters, based on their O-Swing % (the amount of pitches out of the zone at which they swing). For some players, however, this strategy yields success (i.e. Vladimir Guerrerro)

Here's the Five Most Disciplined Hitters

If you're a real baseball fan, you've seen Major League. If you're a real Indians fan, you own the DVD, quote it excessively, and own a pair of Rick Vaughn-esque glasses.

It's an absolute classic full of whacky characters, great one-liners, and some of the best baseball action sequences Hollywood has ever staged. But one of the coolest things about it (and one of the reasons why it holds up so well more than 20 years later) is that life truly has imitated art.

With Trevor Hoffman finally closing in (pun intended) on career save No. 600, I wanted to definitely to highlight the forthcoming achievement in some way.

I thought about a career retrospective but decided that would be best left for once his career is actually complete.

I considered a chronicle of his year-plus spent in a Brewers uniform, but that too isn't a chapter that is finished being written.

WAR (Wins Above Replacement) is a statistic often used to determine the value of a player based on their position, offensive production, and defense. Here are the Major League's 10 Most Valuable Players based on the WAR they have produced.

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