Rankings/List

With the second half of the 2015 MLB regular season beginning Friday night, why not analyze which players will have the biggest say in how the playoff race will shake out?

Timing is critical in every aspect of life, and that adage holds true in sports. Players who find their groove in the second half can spark their teams to postseason glory.

With MLB in the midst of incredible parity, there are a host of potential X-factors throughout the league.

The 2015 All-Star break may be baseball’s midway point, but in fantasy baseball, it means you have about one month-and-a-half left to make a push for the postseason.

First-half standouts can easily become second-half duds. Conversely, the post-All-Star break portion of the season may be when the underperforming early draft pick finally proves his worth.

Chances are your lineup has at least one or two holes in it, so let’s take a look at 10 players (one per position plus a utility bat) who should give your lineup that extra something it needs.

It's that time of year, baseball fans! Let's take a closer look at which teams will be buying and selling at the 2015 MLB trade deadline. 

Baseball is a tough sport to predict on a day-in and day-out basis, and it becomes exponentially more difficult to predict looking years into the future. But that's exactly what we're going to be doing here.

The following is the fifth installment in a series we've dubbed, "B/R's MLB 20 for '20." In this series, we'll attempt to project the top 20 players at each position five years down the road in 2020.

Baseball is a tough sport to predict on a day-in and day-out basis, and it becomes exponentially more difficult to predict looking years into the future. But that's exactly what we're going to be doing here.

The following is the third installment in a series we've dubbed, "B/R's MLB 20 for '20." In this series, we'll attempt to project the top 20 players at each position five years down the road in 2020.

Although Omar Infante and the Kansas City Royals fans gave it their best shot, there won't be any undeserving 2015 MLB All-Stars. 

But that doesn't mean there haven't been some horrific selections over the past decade. We'll rank the 10 least-deserving MLB All-Stars of the last 10 years in the following slides. 

Things never go exactly according to plan over the course of a Major League Baseball season. In fact, many plans are already off the rails by the time the final out is recorded on Opening Day.

That is how storylines are made, and that is where a season's worth of surprises and disappointments are born. For better and worse, the first few months of this one have ushered in the unexpected.

Whether it's been scribbled down on a scrap of paper that is hiding in the corner of a cluttered desk or has been neatly typed out on a smartphone, each general manager of MLB's 30 teams has a trade shopping list at the midseason mark.

Every team has a certain level of expectation when the season starts. It could be as low as starting a long-term rebuild or as high as deeming the season a failure if the team does not win the World Series. 

The implementation of the second wild-card berth in each league has shifted expectations in the last three seasons. Because of that extra spot, more teams see themselves as postseason hopefuls. The evidence is in extreme offseason makeovers and so many teams unwilling to declare themselves sellers as the July 31 trade deadline approaches.  

Major League Baseball released its sixth All-Star Game balloting update Monday, with final results for the July 14 game in Cincinnati to be announced Sunday. Voters have until Thursday night to cast online, although there is always the threat of some votes being “scrubbed” away when the final count is announced.