And after a brief respite from bad teams getting eliminated, we're into the part of the season where teams roughly around league average are getting booted from the playoff race. First up are the San Diego Padres, who rebounded from an awful first half of the year to post a 39-27 record after the All-Star Break.

If you're new here (which about 90% of our reader base is in comparison to last year), here's a brief explanation: after a team is eliminated from the playoffs, we're going to put their season under a microscope and look at just what the hell went wrong, what went right, and so on and so forth. The goal is to post these the day after a team is eliminated. 

What Went Right: Chase Headley, Chase Headley, Chase Headley. The 28-year old third baseman had a career year, and the Padres were wise not to trade him at the trade deadline. Headley has hit 29 homers (more than he had in the last three years combined), is walking in 12.0% of his plate appearances, and is an elite defender at third base. Put all that in a blender, and you have a 6.8 fWAR player, which is third among all major league infielders behing David Wright and Miguel Cabrera. What else? Uh, Carlos Quentin missed half of the year but had 16 homers and a near-.900 OPS, young catcher Yasmani Grandal was a monster in two months in the majors, and closer Huston Street was lights out despite only throwing 37 innings. In fact, Tom Layne, Luke Gregerson, and Dale Thayer helped San Diego's bullpen post a 3.28 ERA this year, just slightly worse than the 2011 pen that featured Heath Bell and Mike Adams.

Not all playoff berths are created equal.  Depending on the team, reaching the post-season can mean simply living up to expectations or quelling an uprising amongst the fanbase and everything in between.  As we enter the final games of the season, let's take a look at which of the still alive National League teams "need" to reach the playoffs the most.

Washington Nationals - The Nats don't need anything.  They have their playoff spot, the first in their team history (second if you want to include their years as the Montreal Expos and sully the memory of Andre Dawson).  This is a young team with a bright future that is headed to the post-season well ahead of schedule, so anything they do from here on out is just gravy.

Cincinnati Reds - The Reds did need to qualify for the playoffs due to the uncertainty around Dusty Baker's job security going into the season.  They've more than put those concerns to rest by winning the NL Central, so consider the need now met.

San Francisco Giants - With their 2010 World Series win still fresh in their mind and a young core of players that aren't going anywhere anytime soon, the Giants need level is pretty low.

Atlanta Braves - After their epic collapse down the stretch last season, it is pretty safe to say that needed to reach the playoffs to avoid an all out mutiny.  The Braves are once again sitting pretty on the verge of clinching the Wild Card, but I think we all know better than to consider them a lock until they actually clinch that spot because Barves.

St. Louis Cardinals - The only reason they need to make the playoffs is to deliver a double middle finger to Albert Pujols who abandoned them for an Angel team that may miss the post-season in their own right.  Otherwise, it is just a single middle finger and that isn't nearly as satisfying.

Los Angeles Dodgers - Prior to August, the Dodgers didn't need to make the post-season since they were still basking in the honeymoon afterglow of divorcing the franchise from the reign of terror that was the McCourt ownership era.  All they had to do was hang around the playoff race and give it a good go and everyone would've gone home happy and full of hope for 2013.  But then the new owners had to go and make the wildly irresponsible trade with the Red Sox that landed them a fair amount of talent and a grotesque amount of future payroll obligations.  With that kind of all-in move, they jacked up their expectations to "playoffs or bust" level.

Milwaukee Brewers - After losing Prince Fielder in free agency before the season and then trading away Zack Greinke at mid-season the Brewers really don't have any business still being involved in a playoff race this late in the year.

Arizona Diamondbacks - After a surprising division win last year, the D'Backs have to be disappointed to be on the verge of missing the playoffs, but did they "need" to make it?  Probably not.  It would have been nice, but their bigger need right now is to figure out if they want to continue trying to build the roster around Justin Upton or not.

Philadelphia Phillies - If anything, the Phillies need to make sure they miss the playoffs.  One could argue that their window to win another championship is perilously close to being closed, so they need to take every last shot they can get.  However, they might actually be better off missing out on the post-season just in case a playoff berth fools their front office into thinking that the roster doesn't have as many holes in it as it really has.

Pittsburgh Pirates - No team needs the playoffs more than the Pirates who haven't seen a post-season (or a winning season, for that matter) in what is about to be 20 season since they are on the verge of being eliminated from the post-season race.  Making matters worse, which is shockingly possible, is that this marks the second consecutive season that the Buccos have given their fans a ray of hope only to snuff it out with extreme prejudice.  Look on the bright side, at least the winning season streak still has an outside shot at being broken, right?

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After last night's Packers-Seahawks disaster in Seattle, the entire sports world is talking about officiating. While last night's terribly blown call might not go down in league history at the end of the day, it will certainly be remembered for the rest of this season. That call got me thinking about some of the worst calls in MLB history, so I started brainstorming and came up with a list of these ten.

Note: there isn't a ton of discussion or video about pre-1980 calls online, so please excuse the lack of content from that time period.

Don Denkinger blows the 1985 World Series

The Cardinals led the Royals 1-0 in Game Six of the 1985 World Series, and were three outs away from the World Championship. Jorge Orta grounds to the right side, Jack Clark throws over to Todd Worrell covering first...and Orta is ruled safe, when replay shows him *blatantly* out. Like, not even close to being safe. The Royals would get the walk-off win, and obliterate the Cardinals in Game Seven to win the World Series.

Kent Hrbek pulls Ron Gant off of the bag

Another absolutely blatant call missed by the umpires. Game Two of the 1991 World Series. With the Braves trailing 2-1 in the third, Ron Gant singles to left field, moving Lonnie Smith up to third base and putting men on the corners for David Justice. But wait...Twins pitcher Kevin Tapani fires to first base as Gant is returning to the bag, and Minnesota first baseman Kent Hrbek pulls Gant off the bag and tags him for the final out of the inning. The play happened two feet in front of first base umpire Drew Coble, and he still blew the call. The Braves lost the game 3-2, and would eventually lose the World Series four games to three. Who knows what would have happened if Atlanta's third inning was allowed to continue?

The Orioles went into Monday looking to close the gap on the Yankees in the AL East standings. Things didn't go as poorly for Baltimore as they did for Detroit on Sunday, but the result wasn't the best case scenario. Baltimore split a doubleheader with the Blue Jays, winning game one 4-1 and losing game two 9-5. The Yankees, their AL East adversaries, won 6-3 in Minnesota to extend their AL East lead to 1.5 games. The Orioles are 1.5 games up on Oakland for the top AL wild card, but they're thinking division still.

Game of the Night: Rangers 5, Athletics 4. Big win for the Rangers, moving them five games up on the A's in the AL West standings. The A's were out front of the Rangers all night, taking a 4-2 lead in the sixth after a Cliff Pennington RBI single. A two-run homer by Adrian Beltre in the seventh tied the game, and Beltre singled in Craig Gentry in the ninth after Josh Hamilton was intentionally walked to give Texas the victory and shrink their magic number to clinch the AL West to four.

This is just unreal. Somehow, Jon Jay of the Cardinals hung on to this Jason Castro line drive. He initially misplayed the ball by coming in, but managed to knock it down with his glove. With the ball floating away from him, Jay snagged the ball with his bare hand to record the out.

With the Cardinals still leading the second wild card in the National League, they need every win they can get, and plays like that will help them big time down the stretch.

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When you're winning, everything goes right for you and your team. In the fifth inning of game one of a doubleheader between the Orioles and Blue Jays, Orioles second baseman Ryan Flaherty hit a solo homer into the Baltimore bullpen...that reliever Luis Ayala snagged wtih his cap. Sitting in the bullpen, Ayala was just showing off with his glove sitting right next to him.

Ayala even had to make the catch backhanded, adding to its awesomeness. Everything is coming up aces at Camden Yards this year...

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When talking about relievers across the league, you know the story...Craig Kimbrel and Aroldis Chapman have been dominant, Fernando Rodney is having an unreal year after being signed on the cheap by the Rays, Chris Perez has been excellent but a loudmouth, and so on and so forth. If you're a fantasy baseball freak, you probably have already picked up and dropped all of these guys...but that doesn't mean that their names have been in the mainstream spotlight that much this season. Here are ten relievers that are having pretty awesome years, but no one is talking about on a larger stage.

1. David Hernandez, Diamondbacks
Hernandez was part of the return that Arizona acquired from the Orioles in exchange for Mark Reynolds prior to the 2011 season. All that Hernandez has done in his new home in the desert is strike out 12.74 batters per nine while walking 3.05 (both rates have vastly improved from 2011) while lowering his ERA by a run to 2.35 this year. Hernandez has been part of a solid Diamondbacks bullpen headed mainly by JJ Putz and Brad Ziegler, but I bet you've heard those names before. 

2. Greg Holland, Royals
HOLY CRAP JOAKIM SORIA BLEW OUT HIS ELBOW AND THE ROYALS BULLPEN IS DOOOOOMED! Well, not really. Holland has slid into Soria's closer role after veteran Jonathan Broxton was dealt at the trade deadline to the Royals, and he's been awesome all year. Holland has struck out 12.17 batters per nine this year, up a full batter from 2011, and while his walk rate and ERA have both gone up, Holland is still mowing hitters down while pitching more than he did in 2011. Even without Soria, the Royals young bullpen of Holland, Kelvin Herrera, Aaron Crow, and Tim Collins has been awesome this year.

3. Sean Doolittle, Athletics
Doolittle is probably my favorite story of the 2012 season. He originally came up as a hitter in Oakland's system, but after missing the 2010 and nearly all of the 2011 season, he was converted to a pitcher and called up to the majors this year after just 25 minor league innings. Of course, as we all predicted, he has a 6.22 strikeout to walk rate (which is actually better than the vaunted Chapman's mark), and has been a huge part of the A's fantastic year. Could anyone have imagined that a former first baseman would walk under two batters per nine as a pitcher in his rookie season? I doubt it.

Our next contestants on the Post-Mortem series are, in something of an upset, the third team in the AL Central to be eliminated and, in nothing of an upset, a popular favorite pre-season dark horse who completely failed to live up to that billing.  That's right, you know them, you mock them... the Kansas City Royals!

If you're new here (which about 90% of our reader base is in comparison to last year), here's a brief explanation: after a team is eliminated from the playoffs, we're going to put their season under a microscope and look at just what the hell went wrong, what went right, and so on and so forth. The goal is to post these the day after a team is eliminated. Also, for the first ten teams eliminated, we're going to post a series called "Hope for the Hopeless", which is going to be an expanded version of the "What Went Right" portion of the Post-Mortem series pieces.

What Went Right: Though it never fully seemed to click, the Royals showed the makings of a promising offense.  Youngster Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain and Mike Moustakas all solid steps forward at the plate.  The real breakout star though looks to be 22-year old catcher Salvador Perez.  Kansas City rolled the dice on the young backstop by locking him into a long-term contract after just 158 plate appearances in 2011 and might've been questioning that decision after he injured his knee in spring training and missed the first half of the season.  But Perez came back healthy and strong, picking up right where he left off in his abbreviated 2011 showcase.  By the looks of it, Perez is set to be the kind of slugging catcher that team's dream of building their

The Tigers came into Sunday's doubleheader with the Twins just a half game behind the White Sox in the AL Central. The Sox were facing a sweep in Anaheim, while the Tigers were staring at the prospect of either tying Chicago or moving a game up in the standings. The worst thing that could happen if you were a Tigers fan would be a pair of losses in the doubleheader, and a White Sox win. Well...the sweep was finished in Anaheim, with the Angels coming out on top 4-1. But the Tigers fell flat on their face looking for a standings boost. The Twins jumped on them late in game one, winning 10-4, and won game two 2-1 in ten innings. So after all that nonsense...it's stil the White Sox leading the AL Central with ten games to play.

Game of the Day: Diamondbacks 10, Rockies 7. This is a "what the hell?" type of game to me between a disappointing team and a disastrous team. The Rockies edged out to a 4-3 lead after six. But Arizona picked up four in the eighth to make it a 7-4 game, highlighted by a three-run homer by Aaron Hill off of the normally reliable Matt Belisle in Colorado's pen. Then, they added a three spot in the ninth against someone named William Harris to extend their lead to 10-4. Takashi Saito came in for the ninth for the Diamondbacks and got blitzed, allowing three runs and all of a sudden making the game close again at 10-7. JJ Putz came in though, and got Jonathan Herrera to ground out after two pitches to end the game. Arizona is still mathematically alive in the wild card standings (actually, a half game ahead of Philadelphia), but it would take a lot of magic for them to reach the playoffs this year.

Earlier this week, it looked like the Orioles and A's had the two wild card slots in the American League locked up. Now...not so much. Baltimore's spot is still secure, and hell, they're still just a game back of the Yankees after Saturday's 9-6 comeback win over the Red Sox. The A's lost in hearbreaking fashion to the Yankees, 10-9 (more on that later), and with the Rays beating the Blue Jays 11-5 and the Angels knocking off the White Sox 4-2, we've got a race. Tampa Bay is now just 3.5 behind the A's with ten to play, while the Angels are 2.5 back. Get ready for chaos, ladies and gentlemen...

Game of the Day: Yankees 10, A's 9 (14 innings). This one really, really hurts for the A's. The game was back and forth over the first nine innings, and went into extras tied at five runs apiece. Oakland exploded for four runs in the 13th after a three homer barrage to take a 9-5 lead....and blew it. Pedro Figueroa allowed three straight singles to start the inning and was pulled for Pat Neshek, who proceeded to allow all three of Figueroa's runners to score, and one of his own after a two-run homer by Raul Ibanez to tie the game. Tyson Ross came in for the 14th for Oakland, and it was a rough inning that ended with Ichiro scoring on a Brandon Moss error at first base to end the game and give New York a huge win and break some hearts in Oakland.