MLB Trade Rumors: Ryan Dempster Would Give Braves the Push They Need in NL East

The Nationals have been good all season, but August is the most important month in baseball.

And if Ryan Dempster ends up being traded from the Cubs to the Braves, they're going to have to start watching their backs more than ever before.

According to CBS Sports' Jon Heyman, a deal that would send Dempster to Atlanta and Braves prospect Randall Delgado to Chicago has a "50-50" chance of happening.

A tweet from ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick on Tuesday indicated that Dempster himself wasn't the source of any holdup:

"

Sources say Ryan Dempster had given preliminary indications that he would accept a trade to the #braves from #cubs

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) July 24, 2012"

Another report from Ken Rosenthal suggests that Dempster is the reason for the holdup—and it's because he'd rather be traded to the Dodgers than the Braves. 

There are going to be roadblocks to clear, as there would be in any trade. This one looked like a done deal on Monday, and yet here we are and nothing has happened, but the Braves need to make sure this one doesn't crumble. They especially can't let their target get away to the Dodgers, since the Dodgers could very likely be a team the Braves are competing with for a wild-card berth at season's end.

Dempster is precisely the piece the Braves need in order to close a four-and-a-half-game gap in the NL East standings. If the Braves' pitching doesn't get better before the trade deadline, they're going to have a hard time catching up with the NL's elite. 

In 15 starts, Dempster has logged 98.0 innings—far fewer than the rest of this season's top 10—but in those innings, he's been the most effective. He may not have as many strikeouts (77) or wins (five) as this season's elite pitchers, but his 2.11 ERA is the best in the NL.

As it stands, the Braves have the league's ninth-best pitching staff. Overall in the MLB, theirs ranks 16th. They boast the NL's third-best offense, which is currently hitting .256; now, all they need is to shore up their pitching staff with a reliable veteran before they're ready to overtake the Nationals at the top of the division.

The Braves can't rely on the inexperienced Nationals to crumble. They've been too good and too consistent for that to happen. That's not saying that it won't, but the Braves aren't where they need to be yet.

There are still a handful of other teams in the National League—including the Giants, the Reds and the Dodgers—all of which are a threat. All of them have the kind of pitching it takes to go deep into the postseason, where arms are the most valuable commodities.

The five teams that have better records than the Braves in the National League—the Nats, Dodgers, Reds, Giants and Pirates—comprise the top five pitching staff in baseball. In order to compete with any of them in the postseason, the Braves need their staff to be better. Their work is cut out for them.

At this point, making any kind of pitching upgrade prior to the August push would be a win for the Braves. Making a move for the pitcher with the league's best ERA is genius.