Rankings/List

Baseball is a funny game. Just ask Yoenis Cespedes, who went from dark-horse MVP candidate to MLB All-Dud squad member in the space of a week.

As it turns out, the New York Mets masher was just one of an array of stars who landed a spot on this unfortunate team. The selection process was all about digging through the numbers to figure out which major leaguers were the worst of the worst during the week that was.

Team strengths are abundant among Major League Baseball’s postseason contenders. They have to be over the course of a demanding 162-game season.

In October, those strengths become more critical than at any other time of the year. However, as the playoffs have shown in series after series, year after year, it is not always a team’s strengths that actually decide its eventual fate.

With the minor league baseball season coming to an end, it's time for an updated look at how all 30 farm systems stack up around the league.

The following factors helped determine the rankings of players and teams:

Let's take a break from the monotony of playoff positioning and award watches to look ahead at the upcoming MLB free-agency period. 

The 2015 class is loaded with talent—David Price, Zack Greinke (potentially), Yoenis Cespedes and Jason Heyward, just to name a few—but there are also a handful of under-the-radar sleepers whom teams should target this winter.

Down the stretch we come! Just over two weeks separate MLB contenders from coveted postseason berths.

The finish line may be in sight, but there's still plenty of time for teams with playoff aspirations to slip up. Over the next few slides, we'll identify five squads across baseball that are the most likely to play spoiler.

What a year it's been for prospects in 2015. Top talents have impressed at every level, including standout performances in the majors. 

Now that the minor league season has concluded, we've compiled a list of 2015's best prospect seasons. The following slideshow will take a closer look at Bleacher Report's 2015 All-Prospect Team.

To be eligible for inclusion, players must still have prospect status and/or spent all of 2015 in the minor leagues. That means you won't find players such as Kyle Schwarber, Miguel Sano and Aaron Nola on this list. 

Josh Donaldson and Bryce Harper are letting their bats and gloves do all the talking in the 2015 MLB MVP conversation.

While the Toronto Blue Jays third baseman and the Washington Nationals right fielder are the front-runners for baseball's most prestigious award in the American League and the National League, respectively, there's an assortment of other standouts who have also played their way into the MVP mix.

The final weeks of the 2015 MLB season are upon us, and with a number of playoff spots still far from decided, it's shaping up to be an exciting finish once again.

For now, let's take an updated look at how all 30 clubs currently stack up.

When putting together this list, we considered the following factors:

Fans and teams alike look to their biggest stars to come through in the clutch, especially down the stretch when every game takes on extra importance and one win—or loss—can be the reason a team is playing meaningful October baseball or watching the playoffs from its couch.

That some key players on contending clubs have found their way onto our Week 23 All-Dud Team isn't good news for those clubs, which will be hard-pressed to reach the promised land without a better showing from those stars.

From the rise of Sonny Gray to the re-emergence of Justin Verlander, there are all sorts of reasons why non-contending clubs like the Oakland Athletics and Detroit Tigers should look forward to next season.

The first step in compiling this list of reasons for optimism was to figure out just which teams qualify as "contenders" and "non-contenders." Since only five clubs have been mathematically eliminated from the postseason chase, judgement calls had to be made.