We’re just past the quarter pole in the major league baseball season and that means it’s time to see where we stand in the race for the All-Star spots and the major awards. Today, TheSportsNotebook’s MLB coverage will focus on the American League.
There’s one more day left in the regular season, and the AL West & AL East titles are still up for grabs. I’ve been holding off doing my final American League All-Star team, hoping we’d get some clarity on the division winners, but there’s no time left, as we’ll run MVP articles tomorrow and playoff commentary starting Friday.
We know St. Louis will visit Atlanta for one wild-card, but Texas, Baltimore, Oakland and New York are all possibilities to be playing in the American League game. It’s also possible the Yankees/Orioles could have a one-game playoff in the AL East. So with all that ahead of us, let’s do another round of individual honors today in celebrating the best at each position in the American League.
TheSportsNotebook’s Road To Kansas City ends today with a review of the American League bullpen, as we continue to pick the leaders in the All-Star race as baseball gets set to convene on KC for the July 10 All-Star game. We closed the National League yesterday with its bullpen, so now let’s finish off the American League. The rules are to create a true bullpen, not a compilation of top closers, so TheSportsNotebook’s team has two setup relievers and one closer.
The Cleveland Indians are hanging in the AL Central race, only 1.5 games back of Chicago coming into Monday’s games. And while a big part of that is the division they play in—at 33-32, the Tribe are only a half-game better than the Boston Red Sox or Miami Marlins, both of whom are fighting for their lives against tougher competition—another big part of it is the play of second baseman Jason Kipnis. The 25-year-old in his first major league season is having a year that would measure up against any caliber of competition and he leads up our discussion of American League second baseman on The Road To Kansas City and the July 10 All-Star game.