Who's Hot, Who's Not in Crucial MLB Playoff Races

With apologies to fans in Arizona and Anaheim, and with all due respect to fans in St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, there are 10 teams still fighting for five playoff spots with just 11 days left in the 2013 MLB regular season.

If we haven't already reached it, we're nearing the point in the season where one single pitch could be the difference between making the playoffs or spending the month of October working on the old golf swing.

When that pitch takes place, who does each team want on the mound or at the plate?

Perhaps even more importantly, who does each team not want on the mound or at the plate?

For each of the remaining playoff contenders, here are the players who are hot and the tortured few who clearly are not.

*Unless otherwise cited, all statistics are courtesy of ESPN.com and Fangraphs.com and are accurate through the start of play on Wednesday, Sept. 18.

Cleveland Indians

Who's Hot: Ubaldo Jimenez, Scott Kazmir and Danny Salazar

For the longest time, it looked like the Indians were going to hang around .500 behind the arms of Justin Masterson, Zack McAllister and Corey Kluber, only to have their postseason dreams smashed by the continued use of Jimenez and Kazmir.

In the first half of the season, Kazmir had a 4.60 ERA, 4.42 FIP and 3.14 BB/9. Jimenez wasn't any better, posting marks of 4.56 ERA, 4.50 FIP and 4.83 BB/9.

Out of seemingly nowhere, they have both been on fire.

Jimenez has a 3-0 record and 0.42 ERA in September and has recorded 10 strikeouts in three of his last five starts after failing to reach that plateau at any point in the first four-and-a-half months of the season.

Meanwhile, Kazmir has a 1.87 BB/9 IP over his last 10 starts and has an absurd 22/0 K/BB ratio in September although Edinson Volquez is in third place on that list at with a K/BB ratio of 16/0 despite a career ratio of 1.78. So, you know, beware of sample sizes.

And then there's Salazar, who doesn't have a win or a loss in September, but has a league-leading 14.49 K/9.

Ironically, the pitchers who were previously holding the team back have been the ones holding the fort down while Masterson recovers from an oblique injury and McAllister continues to struggle to get people out in the second half of the season.

Who's Not: Michael Bourn

Everything about Bourn is worse than it had been over the previous four years. His batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, walk rate, strikeout rate and stolen base count are all worse than they have been since his -0.2 WAR season in 2008.

Though somewhat injury-plagued, his play in the first half of the season was at least acceptable, as he was batting .290 with 13 stolen bases in 298 plate appearances. In the second half, however, he's sitting at .223 with just nine stolen bases in 242 trips to the plate. His September has been particularly dreadful, as he's batting .217 and nearly averaging one strikeout for every three at-bats.

Yet, Bourn has been in the leadoff spot in every game that he has started this season, giving away at-bats for a team desperately fighting for a playoff spot.

Pittsburgh Pirates

Who's Hot: Gerrit Cole, Mark Melancon and Andrew McCutchen

In each of his 17 starts this season, Cole has gone at least five innings and has only once allowed more than three earned runs—against the Marlins, of course. He has six consecutive quality starts and has 35 strikeouts against nine walks during those six games.

Melancon has made seven appearances in September for seven saves and has not walked a batter since his last blown save on Aug. 13.

McCutchen has been on fire for five straight months, but has been particularly unstoppable as of late, batting .384 in August and .412 in September.

Anchored by those three studs, the Pirates were able to bounce back from a three-game sweep at the hands of the Cardinals to deliver a three-game sweep of their own to the Rangers in climbing back into a share of first place in the NL Central.

Who's Not: Pedro Alvarez

When he isn't belting home runs, Alvarez becomes a pretty massive liability.

Alvarez has committed 27 errors this season, which is not only the most by any player by a significant margin, but matches his total from 2012.

And then there's his 31.1 percent strikeout rate, which trails only B.J. Upton and Dan Uggla for worst among National League batters with at least 400 plate appearances. A direct product of that poor contact rate, Alvarez's .228 batting average is among the bottom 10 percent in the same data set.

His 33 home runs are good enough for a share of the NL lead, but he has only hit one since Aug. 28, marking a stretch of 20 games where he is batting .147 with 16 strikeouts.

As great as McCutchen has been in recent weeks, combining his output with that of Alvarez essentially equates to a pair of league-average players.

Baltimore Orioles

Who's Hot: Jim Johnson

Perhaps more so than any other role in professional sports, closers have a perceived tendency to oscillate between hot and cold.

Take Craig Kimbrel, for example.

From May 8 through Sept. 13, the Orioles' closer had converted 36 consecutive save opportunities and allowed one earned run in 46.1 innings of work.

However, he has allowed earned runs in his last two appearances. If he blows his next save opportunity, prepare yourself to read a lot of garbage about whether he's wearing down again, as he had in 2011.

It's just the nature of the beast. Throw three bad pitches in the span of a week and suddenly your entire fan base has lost all faith in you.

Incredibly, Johnson has bounced back from multiple stretches this season in which angry fans wanted him gone. Johnson blew a one-run lead in three consecutive appearances in mid-August and capped it off by allowing a solo home run in a non-save situation two days later.

Since that Todd Helton home run on Aug. 16, Johnson has converted seven straight save chances, ceding zero earned runs and just one walk in his last 10.2 innings on the mound.

Should the Orioles miss the playoffs by a slim margin, it will be all too easy to point to Johnson's nine blown saves—eight of which resulted in losses for the O's—as the reason that they would be watching the playoffs instead of in them. However, he has been rock solid over the past month and is currently one of the few players actually keeping the Orioles in the playoff picture.

Who's Not: Manny Machado

I love Machado. I want nothing more than to watch him play third base for the next 15 years.

But the rigors of a 162-game season seem to have caught up with him.

At the All-Star break, Machado was batting .310 and on pace to hit 66 doubles. In his 53 games since then, he's batting .251 and has had his doubles pace cut nearly in half to 36. He hasn't successfully stolen a base in three months and already has as many strikeouts in September as he did in the entire month of May.

He had a resurgent month with a batting average of .321 in August, but after batting better than .300 in each of the first three months of the season, Machado batted .196 in July and is sitting at .211 thus far in September.

Adding insult to injury, Machado committed two errors on Tuesday night, perhaps handing the AL third base Gold Glove Award to Evan Longoria on a silver platter.

Washington Nationals

Who's Hot: Wilson Ramos and Ryan Zimmerman

Other than Hunter Pence going to waste on a sub-.500 team and significantly increasing his free-agent stock by posting a .421/.493/.965 line with nine home runs in the month of September, no one in baseball has been hotter than Zimmerman.

After hitting three home runs against the Orioles on May 29, he hit just nine home runs over the course of his next 322 at-bats.

He followed up that cold spell by hitting nine home runs in a span of 11 games between Sept. 2-13, during which the Nationals went 9-2 and climbed back to within shouting distance of the Reds for the second National League Wild Card.

Ramos deserves some kind of prestigious medallion for his efforts over the past month.

Due to the wear and tear of crouching behind the plate more than 100 times per game, most catchers get regular days off.

Matt Wieters leads all catchers in innings played this season, and even he has only started 124 of Baltimore's 149 games (83.2 percent) at catcher. Even the most regular starting catcher gets out of calling balls and strikes in one out of every six games.

Ramos has not been a regular catcher.

He started every game at catcher between when the Nationals traded Kurt Suzuki back to Oakland on Aug. 22 and the second half of Tuesday's double-header against the Braves. That's a stretch of 24 consecutive games played at baseball's most physically demanding position.

Not only has Ramos been an iron man, he's hitting the ball like he's never been less fatigued in his life. The first week of this streak wasn't particularly kind to his batting average, but Ramos has seven home runs and 23 RBI since Aug. 30. And just for good measure, he has thrown out six of 17 baserunners attempting to steal on him.

Who's Not: Nobody

I am admittedly a Nationals fan boy, but unless you want to harp on Ian Krol for an 11.57 ERA in 2.1 innings of work in September, I'm not sure how you can argue that anyone has been a real disappointment over the past few weeks.

Tampa Bay Rays

Who's Hot: Wil Myers

Lost among a sea of batters in Tampa Bay wanting nothing to do with runners in scoring position, Myers is batting .400 since Sept. 3 with 10 runs scored and 10 runs batted in.

Considering the Rays have only scored 50 runs as a team during that stretch, it's safe to say they would be hopelessly lost without the rookie who they refused to call up until mid-June.

Who's Not: Joel Peralta and Matt Joyce

Peralta has allowed at least one batter to reach base in each of his past eight outings in compiling an 0-3 record with a 7.36 ERA and 2.05 WHIP over his last 7.1 innings of work.

That's nothing compared to the detriment that Joyce has been.

Joyce lost his status as a near-everyday player some time ago and he certainly hasn't done much in recent weeks to get it back. So far in September, he is 2-for-34 and has been caught stealing twice.

He has scored no runs, stolen any bases or knocked in a run in more than 30 plate appearances, putting him in a club with New York's Josh Satin as the only players in September who can make that claim. At least Satin has a .273 slugging percentage. Both of Joyce's hits for the month were singles, amounting to a .059 slugging percentage.

Not only has Joyce not been hot, but you could legitimately argue that he has been MLB's least valuable player over the past two-plus weeks.

Texas Rangers

Who's Hot: Alex Rios

After being unable to get an outfielder at the non-waiver trade deadline, the Rangers finally replaced Nelson Cruz with Rios in early August.

Good thing they did because he is just about all that is going right for them in the final month of the season.

Rios is batting .322/.365/.525 with three home runs and five stolen bases. Elvis Andrus bypassed him by going 2-for-3 with a walk, but at the start of play on Tuesday, each of those numbers was at least tied for best on the team. In their three wins this month, Rios has five hits in 14 at-bats with two home runs.

If not for him, they very well could be winless in September.

Who's Not: Derek Holland, Matt Garza and Mitch Moreland

Playing the part of the antithesis of Rios, Moreland is batting .143 and striking out in 42.9 of his September plate appearances. He does have two solo home runs, but at what cost?

Also in stark contrast to Rios' impressive stay in Texas, Garza has been just shy of worthless since arriving in the Lone Star State. His 4.94 ERA is easily the worst among Rangers who have logged at least 20 innings pitched since the All-Star break. He has given up at least three earned runs in nine of his 11 starts for Texas.

Holland's 3.99 ERA since the All-Star break isn't much better than Garza's.

After posting a K/9 IP of 8.7 and allowing eight home runs over 125.2 IP in the first half of the season, Holland apparently switched bodies with Phil Hughes and has averaged just 7.0 K/9 IP in the second half while allowing 11 home runs in 67.2 innings.

A far cry from their 9-2 record in his first 11 starts of the season, the Rangers have won just five of Holland's last 11 outings.

St. Louis Cardinals

Who's Hot: Matt Carpenter and Kevin Siegrist

He certainly isn't a prototypical MVP candidate, but the Cardinals would be lost without Carpenter.

While virtually every other member of the St. Louis roster has dealt with injuries or bouts of ineffectiveness, Carpenter has been a continual source of production from Day 1 and will very likely finish the 2013 season atop the NL leaderboard in runs scored.

He batted .321 in the first half of the season and has seen that number rise to .326 in the second half. He has stepped up his game even further for the home stretch, batting .415 for September.

Siegrist is hardly a household name, but after all of the recent obsession over the scoreless streaks of Craig Kimbrel and Koji Uehara, perhaps he should be.

In his last 21.0 innings pitched, Siegrist has allowed nine hits, nine walks, no runs and has recorded 28 strikeouts.

It's perhaps impossible to calculate the actual value of a middle reliever, but I'll tip my cap to anyone who can put together three wins, seven holds and no runs allowed during a seven-week stretch of constant playoff implications.

Who's Not: Carlos Beltran and Edward Mujica

At the opposite end of the relief pitching spectrum, Mujica can't seem to buy a flawless inning as of late. Mujica has allowed at least one earned run in four of his last eight outings, and has allowed exactly two hits in six of his last nine games.

Add it all up and the St. Louis' closer has a 5.63 ERA and a WHIP of 1.50 since a string of three consecutive appearances in mid-August in which Mike Matheny (perhaps foolishly) allowed his closer to pitch multiple innings. His strikeout rate has also dropped considerably from 6.9 K/9 IP on Aug. 15 to just three strikeouts over his last eight innings of work (3.4 K/9 IP).

Then there's Beltran, who has apparently forgotten how to hit home runs.

After a somewhat surprising 19 round-trippers in the first three months of the season, Beltran has hit just four home runs since June 30 with the most recent one coming on Aug. 24.

It's more than just a power outage, though. In the 22 games (nearly one-seventh of the entire season) since his last home run, Beltran is batting just .203 with six runs scored and eight RBI.

Someone other than Matt Adams is going to need to step up and provide some power down the stretch. Does Beltran have anything left in his 36-year-old tank?

New York Yankees

Who's Hot: Nobody

Save for Robinson Cano—who has just six home runs in the second half of the season after belting 21 before the All-Star break—Alex Rodriguez's .283 is the best batting average on the team since mid-July.

You may wish to see Alfonso Soriano in this space because of his 15 home runs since joining the Yankees, but since that insanely hot streak came to an end on Aug. 17, he's batting just .200 and averaging more than one strikeout per game.

The pitching staff hasn't been any better.

Who's Not: Ivan Nova, C.C. Sabathia and Phil Hughes

To be fair, Hughes has never been hot. His 6.39 ERA since the All-Star break is about what the Bronx has come to expect from him.

Sabathia, however, is supposed to be the rock in this rotation. Instead of carrying the Yankees to the promised land, he is weighing them down with a 6.58 ERA over his last 11 starts.

Nova was actually their most valuable pitcher during the months of July and August, posting an ERA of 2.06 and recording a quality start in all but one of his 10 starts.

In three September starts, that Nova is nowhere to be found. He has given up 11 earned runs in 14 innings of work and has walked more batters than he has struck out.

If the Yankees are going to right the ship and sneak into the playoffs through the back door, all three of those pitchers are going to need to return to something resembling peak form in a hurry.

Cincinnati Reds

Who's Hot: Aroldis Chapman and Shin-Soo Choo

We've mentioned a handful of other relief pitchers already, but none of them have been as hot as Chapman.

Over his last 7.1 innings pitched, Chapman has 18 strikeouts for a K/9 IP of 22.1. He has walked three batters, but has allowed zero runs to score and has given up just one hit on a bloop single to right field by David Freese.

One way to limit that silly effect of BABIP is to keep 21 out of 26 batters from even putting the ball in play, as Chapman has done over the past three weeks.

Choo only has a .500 on-base percentage in 73 September plate appearances—including getting hit by two pitches to bring his league-leading total to 25 beanballs on the year.

Who's Not: Brandon Phillips

Making up for Choo's absurd on-base percentage, Phillips has tallied just a .266 OBP in September with precisely one walk and zero RBI since Sept. 5.

On the bright side, at least it's been three weeks since he lashed out at any reporters for pointing out his terrible on-base percentage.

Kansas City Royals

Who's Hot: James Shields, Luke Hochevar and Salvador Perez

Shields has been so hot that he gave up 10 earned runs in one outing two weeks ago and still has an ERA of 3.53 in the second half of the season—thanks to 10 quality starts in 12 chances.

In Hochevar's last 12.2 innings, prior to inexplicably allowing a solo home run to Michael Bourn on Tuesday night, he had allowed four hits, no walks, no runs and recorded 21 strikeouts (14.9 K/9 IP). He has been so dominant, in fact, that the Royals have begun using him as the set-up man for Greg Holland while Aaron Crow and Kelvin Herrera try to remember how to get batters out.

That's certainly not the role the Royals envisioned for Hochevar when they selected him first overall in the 2006 first-year player draft, but at least he's finally providing some sort of positive value to the team.

Last, but certainly not least, Perez has been on fire since mid-August. Perez has 37 hits in his last 101 at-bats, and has nearly as many extra base hits (12) as he does strikeouts (13), including seven home runs and 27 RBI.

Not bad for a guy who had one home run in the first two months of the season.

Who's Not: Mike Moustakas

One of these years, we'll make a collective executive decision on whether or not Moustakas will ever figure out how to hit at the big league level.

For now, however, a .236 batting average with 11 home runs in 440 at-bats is a pretty major disappointment from a player who batted .322 with 36 home runs in 484 at-bats between Double-A and Triple-A in 2010.

The month of September has been even more disappointing than the whole picture. He's batting .200 with only one home run—coming in the 13th inning of a game that he didn't even start.

Too bad the Royals don't have any other viable options at third base because Moustakas is clearly the weak link in an otherwise well-oiled machine.