Each MLB Division Race's Most Fascinating Aspect To Watch in 2nd Half

If you're a real baseball fan, you shouldn't need much convincing when I tell you that you're not going to want a miss a minute of the action in the second half of the 2012 season.

It's looking like this season is going to have a wild finish. There are eight teams in the National League that are over the .500 mark, and 11 teams that are .500 or better in the American League (as of the start of play on Tuesday, July 17). The extra wild card in each league means there's more incentive for the fringe contenders to stay in the race until the bitter end.

And at the moment, the only division in baseball that isn't up for grabs is the AL East, where the New York Yankees have a huge lead over the competition. The other five divisions could see a few lead changes before the season is over.

To boot, each division race has its own storylines that are worth monitoring. In the weeks to come, here's a look at one storyline in each division that you should be keeping an eye on.

Note: Any stats that you find within are as of the start of play on Tuesday, July 17, and they come from Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

AL East: Is There an End to Boston's Bad Luck?

Who wants to finish in second place in the AL East this year?

This is actually a really good question.

The Baltimore Orioles started the day in second place, but they're trending in the wrong direction, and the good luck they enjoyed earlier in the season has all but disappeared. They're a sub-.500 team since early May, and their starting pitching is an absolute mess that won't be easy to fix.

The Tampa Bay Rays have been without Evan Longoria since the start of May, and the Rays have played sub-.500 baseball during his absence. All signs point toward him not being back any time soon, and Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com has reported that the Rays haven't ruled out selling at the trade deadline.

The Toronto Blue Jays have five starting pitchers on the disabled list at the moment, and they had to put star slugger Jose Bautista on the DL as well. They're a sinking ship, and they don't have a ton of incentive to buy at the trade deadline because of how well they're set up for the future beyond this season.

This leaves the Boston Red Sox—a team that many think has been disappointing this season. 

A better word for the Red Sox would be "unlucky." They played the first half without two-thirds of their starting outfield and had to overcome uncharacteristic performances from key players like Adrian Gonzalez, Jon Lester and Josh Beckett. It's remarkable that they managed to end the first half with an even .500 record.

The Red Sox's luck should be better in the second half, and because of that, they should end up in second place in the division when all is said and done.

But maybe Boston's luck won't be better. It's hard to take anything for granted after what happened on Monday. The Sox had Jacoby Ellsbury and Carl Crawford in the same lineup for the first time all season, and Gonzalez hit a big three-run homer, but the story of the game was David Ortiz's Achilles injury.

So, it could be that Boston's bad luck is going to hold in the final two months or so of the regular season. If that ends up being the case, whoever earns second place in the AL East will earn it by default.

AL Central: Which Contender Has the Most Creative GM?

At the moment, the AL Central is the most wide-open division race in the American League. The Chicago White Sox are in the lead, but the Detroit Tigers are charging hard, and the Cleveland Indians are just three games back.

There is no favorite in this race. Not even the first-place White Sox. All three teams at the top of the Central have their flaws, and these flaws make it hard to pick a winning horse.

The question now is which Central contender is going to make the biggest splash at the trade deadline, and what's tricky about that is that none of them are sitting on a pile of dealable assets.

At the start of the season, Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus ranked Cleveland's farm system No. 24 in all of baseball, while Detroit was at No. 27, and Chicago was the absolute worst in baseball, at No. 30.

There are some big names being bandied about these days. People are waiting for the Chicago Cubs to deal Ryan Dempster and Matt Garza, the Milwaukee Brewers to deal Zack Greinke and the Philadelphia Phillies to deal Cole Hamels and Shane Victorino.

These are players that should appeal to the AL Central's three main contenders, and there have been rumors linking the White Sox and Tigers in particular to some of the big names. Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com has reported that the White Sox like Greinke, and he's also written that the Tigers could go after Greinke or Hamels.

As for the Indians, Tribe manager Manny Acta recently told ESPN's Jim Bowden that the front office is "aggressively" pursuing an outfielder or a starting pitcher.

All of this is good rumor mill fodder, but it's hard to see how the rumors are going to lead to reality because of how thin these clubs are down on the farm.

So in essence, the race for the AL Central is going to come down to which team has the most creative general manager, not the best team out on the field.

AL West: How Serious Are the Oakland A's?

The Texas Rangers and the Los Angeles Angels are right where they're supposed to be in the AL West. The Rangers are on top, and the Angels are right there with them.

What few people expected was that the Oakland A's would be in the mix as well at this point in time.

Surprise, surprise. The A's are 46-43 after opening the second half with a sweep of the hapless Minnesota Twins, and they're suddenly just 2.5 games behind the Angels for second place in the division.

Nobody planned on this happening. Not even Billy Beane (though you probably won't get him to admit it). This was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the A's.

The question facing the A's is how seriously they want to take the team's winning ways. They were widely viewed as inevitable sellers at the trade deadline, but now it's hard to take anything for granted where they're concerned.

The A's may actually be more interested in buying. Ken Rosenthal has reported that they're looking for a shortstop, and Tim Brown of Yahoo! Sports rightfully pointed out that the A's are a rare contender that is able to trade arms for bats.

But then again, who knows how serious Beane is about putting his team in a position to nab a wild-card berth? It was just last week that Danny Knobler of CBSSports.com reported that the A's were viewing themselves as sellers rather than buyers.

You could argue that things have changed since then. But honestly, how much does a sweep of a lousy team like the Twins really change things?

Not much.

It's a tricky situation, to be sure. Beane should be focused on the team's future beyond this season, but Oakland's fanbase could use something to cheer about. He has a tough call to make.

More than one, in fact.

NL East: The Stephen Strasburg Watch

The Washington Nationals have the best record in the National League, and that has a lot to do with their starting pitching. Nats starters have compiled a 3.21 ERA this season—tops in the major leagues.

Stephen Strasburg has been Washington's best starter this season, and at the moment, he looms large in the NL Cy Young race. He's been everything all the experts said he was going to be when he first broke into the league back in 2010.

But everyone knows the clock is ticking on Strasburg. The Nationals made it clear before the start of the season that they weren't going to push their luck with Strasburg's surgically repaired right arm, and they haven't backed down on this stance.

The line has been drawn at 160 innings. Nats GM Mike Rizzo told Baseball Prospectus back in April that the media came up with that figure, but it's a figure that makes sense because of how the Nationals handed Jordan Zimmermann in 2011. 

Strasburg is already up to 105 innings, putting him in line to hit the 160-innings mark sometime in August. If the Nationals are true to their word, it's unlikely that Strasburg will throw a single pitch in September or beyond.

Strasburg's absence will have an effect on the NL East race, and it probably won't be a positive one for the Nationals. They have a small enough lead to begin with, as they only hold a 2.5-game advantage over the Atlanta Braves. It's possible that they may not be in first place at all when Strasburg gets shut down, and things could spiral out of control from there.

It doesn't help that the Nationals are a young team that's in uncharted waters right now. They're in the driver's seat now, but they still have a lot to prove.

NL Central: Can the Reds Stay Afloat Without Joey Votto?

The Cincinnati Reds don't have a balanced offense, but they've been able to win plenty of games anyway because of the overall strength of their starting pitching staff and because they have the best hitter in baseball on their side.

That would be Joey Votto, of course. He leads all major league hitters with a .465 on-base percentage (absurd), and he ranks second behind Andrew McCutchen in weighted on-base average at .445, according to FanGraphs.

The Reds got some bad news about Votto on Monday. As reported by John Fay of the Cincinnati Enquirer, the 2010 NL MVP is going to be out three to four weeks as he recovers from knee surgery.

The Reds are good enough to weather the storm, but let's face it: There's a limit to how good they're going to be as long as they're without baseball's best hitter.

To make matters worse, they hardly have a vise grip on first place in the NL Central. The Pittsburgh Pirates are just a game out, and the defending world champion St. Louis Cardinals are just 3.5 games off the pace.

With Votto out, both the Pirates and the Cardinals have every excuse to make their move now. The Pirates are particularly dangerous because of how hot they've been since the start of June, but the Cardinals can't be counted out because...well, because they're the Cardinals.

By the time Votto is back in Cincinnati's lineup, the Reds will probably have ground to make up in the division. And there's really no overstating how important making up that ground is going to be if they find themselves in that position.

There may be two wild-card spots up for grabs this season, but there are plenty of wild-card contenders in the NL East and NL West. There's no guarantee that the Central will produce a wild-card team this season.

So hurry back, Votto. Your team is going to need you. 

NL West: Is Tim Lincecum Back?

The NL West has been a two-team race for much of the season, and the Arizona Diamondbacks didn't exactly inspire confidence when they opened the second half by getting swept by the lowly Chicago Cubs.

So, it's looking like the race for the NL West crown will be a battle between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers, just as it's been for virtually the entire season.

Neither team is perfect, but there's no denying that the Dodgers have a lot more problems to solve than the Giants. They need to shore up their starting rotation, their outfield, their infield and their bullpen. Ned Colletti is going to be a busy man over the next couple of weeks, and his cause is not helped by the fact that the Dodgers don't have a ton of assets to trade.

The biggest question concerning the Giants hasn't changed since the very first day of the regular season: When is the real Tim Lincecum going to show up?

It could be that the real Lincecum arrived over the weekend, as Lincecum blanked the Houston Astros over eight innings while striking out 11. It was a vintage Big Time Timmy Jim performance.

But Lincecum has teased Giants fans before. It was just a couple of weeks ago that he dominated the Dodgers over seven innings, and he followed that start by giving up 13 earned runs over 6.2 innings in his next two starts.

If Lincecum proceeds to build on his strong start against the Astros and actually put a little momentum together, the race in the NL West will be over. The Giants have been the best team in the National League this season in games that haven't been started by Lincecum. If he starts pulling his weight, the Giants will run away with the NL West.

If Lincecum continues to be an enigma, the NL West race will go down to the wire.

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