A friend passed along this image from a local Washington DC store, selling Washington Nationals 2012 NL East champions t-shirts. The problem? Washington has only clinched a playoff berth, and not the division crown. The Nationals are four games up on the Braves with eight to play, and unlike in the Reds in NL Central and the Giants in NL West, it's possible for Washington to fall out of the division lead before the end of the year and be forced into a wild card spot. Now, that's not an extremely likely scenario given everything it would take for that to happen...but it's still a possibility.

Looks like someone jumped the gun a little bit, and the door is now open for fans to start screaming about a possible jinx involving the Nationals.

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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 American League teams "need" to reach the playoffs the most.

Texas Rangers - Playoffs?  No, the Rangers don't "need" the playoffs.  What they need is a championship after coming up short the last two seasons.  The playoffs are just a means to the end of avoiding "One Strike Away Twice" becoming synonymous with "Wide Right."  It is World Series Champs or bust for the Buffalo Bills, errr... I mean the Texas Rangers.

New York Yankees - There is always a major need for the Yankees to not only make the playoffs but go deep.  Should they somehow find a way to blow their division lead and then fail to secure a Wild Card berth, the reaction in the Bronx might very well be what triggers the predicted Mayan Apocalypse.  However, just reaching the post-season may not be good enough.  Even though the Yanks have been hampered by injuries of late, they are starting to get healthy, so it is hard to believe that the Steinbrenners would be happy if the Yanks took an early exit in the LDS for the second consecutive season.

Chicago White Sox - Sorry, but the White Sox don't really need the playoffs.  This season is already a huge win for them.  Everyone thought they were destined for doom thanks to a flawed roster, a totally inexperienced manager and an off-season plan by the front office that nobody really understood.  That they are leading their division this late in the season is one of the biggest surprises of the year and yet almost nobody is talking about it.  Even if they can't hold on to the AL Central, the Pale Hose have to feel pretty good about what they've accomplished in 2012.

Detroit Tigers - Detroit's "need" is pretty huge. The Tigers were supposed to cruise to an easy division crown in the weak AL Central after they opened up their wallets to add Prince Fielder in the off-season.  Instead of clinching the division in mid-July like so many expected, the Tigers are fighting to claw their way past the White Sox.  If they fail to do so, heads, specifically Jim Leyland's, could roll once the regular season comes to an end.

Baltimore Orioles - The YOLOrioles just aren't ever going to die are they?  That's probably for the best because the AL East is so loaded that this might be their only shot at reaching the post-season, and thus ending their 14-year playoff drought.  So, yeah, even though the O's have a good amount of young talent in the pipeline, Baltimore "needs" the playoffs desperately, unless their contract with the Devil was a multi-year pact, of course.

Oakland Athletics - In a lot of respects, the A's "need" level is simlar to the Orioles because they too are stuck in a brutally tough division, however it does appear that their success so far this year is more substantitve, it just came a year or two before anyone expected it to.  That should set them up to compete for the post-season over the next few seasons, but they still face a pretty high degree of difficulty.  But what really amps up the need in Oakland is the way that the franchise has antagonized its own fans for the last few years with the budget cuts, fire sale-ish trades, change in broadcasters and, most of all, their constant pining to move to San Jose.  Throw the fans a bone, Oakland, and give the fans a post-season run.

Los Angeles Angels - Take the Tigers' situation and double it.  The Halos spent hundreds of millions of dollars this last winter to reload their roster with the likes of Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson.  Then they got the manna from heaven that is the superlative Mike Trout.  Yet they still are on the outside looking in at the second Wild Card spot in the AL.  Their "need" got knocked down a notch earlier this week when Arte Moreno came out to give Mike Scioscia a public reprieve in the midst a flurry of reports that he could get fired if the Angels didn't win a playoff spot.  Still, no team will go down as a bigger disappointment in the 2012 season if the Halos can't find a way to rundown the A's or O's for a Wild Card berth.

Tampa Bay Rays - The Rays have made the post-season three of the last four years, so there is no urgent need to qualify just to keep the fans and ownership happy.  Alas, the Rays are working under different circumstances than most teams.  With their strictly limited resources and ultra-competitive division, you just never know how long they can remain competitive, even with their fantastic front office and coaching staff.  Sooner or later their farm system is going to run dry and until that day comes, they need to take as many bites at the apple as they can get.

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Everyone remembers last year's epic Atlanta Braves collapse that kept them home in October. What you might *not* remember is that in the final game of the year where the Braves were officially eliminated, a Freddie Freeman double play was the last play of the year that officially put the final nail in Atlanta's coffin. On Tuesday, the Braves clinched a playoff berth (just their second in seven years, amazingly enough) and it was Freeman who pushed them into the postseason with a walkoff two-run homer that sent Atlanta to a 4-3 win over the Miami Marlins. And predictably, the runner on base that scored on Freeman's homer? The retiring Chipper Jones. Sweet, sweet poetic justice...

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The long ball. Once the focal point of baseball throughout the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, it is now very much still apart of the game, but one that has seen its frequency cut dramatically due to the implementation of strict PED testing. However, that testing doesn't keep players from finding power surges of their own from year-to-year. This series will look at ten players who had a minimum of 350 plate appearances in 2011 and saw an increase of at least 15 or more dingers this season.

Adam Dunn

The National League playoff picture was clarified a little more on Tuesday night. The Braves came from behind to walk off on the Marlins, winning 4-3 to clinch a playoff spot in the NL. There's just one spot remaining, and it's currently held by the defending World Champion Cardinals, who have a 4.5 game lead in the race for the second wild card spot on the Dodgers and Brewers. However, despite four teams already being locked in, the seeding is still up in the air. Atlanta is four back in the NL East behind Washington, and still has an outside shot at winning the division. If that happened, it would be devastating for the Nationals to be pushed into the wild card playoff as opposed to the Braves, who have seemingly been penciled in to that slot all season. It appears that either the Nationals or Reds will take the top seed in the NL, as both currently have identical 93-61 records, four games up on the Braves and Giants. This thing is getting tight, folks.

Game of the Night: Athletics 3, Rangers 2 (ten innings). Speaking of tight races, the A's closed the gap in the AL West to four games behind the Rangers and retained their two game lead over the Angels in the race for the AL's second wild card with this win. The Rangers got a pair of unearned runs in the first inning off of Oakland starter Tommy Milone thanks to a Brandon Moss error in right field, but were shut down over the rest of the game by the road-fearing starter and the A's bullpen. The Athletics would slowly peck away, scoring one in the second on a Daric Barton double, and tying the game at two in the fourth after a Chris Carter homer. Then, the bullpens took over...until the tenth, when Texas reliever Mark Lowe allowed a solo jack to George Kottaras to put the A's ahead 3-2. Grant Balfour mowed the Rangers down in the bottom of the inning, and there's your ballgame.

Phillies fans are excited about Darin Ruf, who spent the year with AA Reading and broke the team record for home runs in a season, blasting 38 dingers on the season. However, he turned 26 in July and was way too old for the level. While that's true, the fact that he's a power threat is also true, regardless of age. In Tuesday's Phillies-Nationals game, Ruf cracked his first major league hit, a homer to left center off of Washington starter Ross Detwiler on a 3-2 pitch. Say what you want about the old rookie, but if you throw a 93 mph fastball and stick it inside and belt high, that baby is getting destroyed if you possess the natural power that Ruf does.

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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.