MLB Notebook: Age is just a number to Adam Wainwright

There’s no other way to say it: It’s been a pretty slow news month in Major League Baseball. Many division races are wrapped up at this point, and playoff-related drama focuses on the wild card spots. Here’s a look around the league!

Three AL East Teams, Two Wild Card Spots

While the Tampa Bay Rays sit comfortably atop the division, three squads are competing for the junior circuit’s two wild card spots. As of this writing, the Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees, and Boston Red Sox are tied, with the Oakland Athletics and Seattle Mariners both within four games and not totally out of it.

NL West: Division Champs, or Wild Card?

The San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers have been throwing haymakers at one another all season long. Currently, the Giants hold a slim, 2.5-game lead in the division. While both teams have secured playoff spots, it’s unclear which spots they’ll wind up with.

Whichever team doesn’t win the division will need to survive a do-or-die wild card game to kick off the postseason, and that’s an undesirable spot for any franchise to be in.

Ryan Braun Retires

Milwaukee’s all-time leader in home runs called it a career Tuesday after not suiting up for any team during the 2021 campaign.

Braun finishes with 352 round-trippers and was named the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 2011. However, the man known as the "Hebrew Hammer" was also linked to the infamous Biogenesis clinic and admitted to taking performance-enhancing drugs a year after a lengthy battle that featured attacks on the character of test collector Dino Laurenzi Jr.

Age Just a Number to Wainwright

We’ll close with a pretty cool series of stats from St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright, who celebrated his 40th birthday just a few weeks ago. The righty has done a stellar job warding off Father Time and has won each of his last five starts, including Monday’s outing with the Mets that included six shutout innings.

Wainwright is 16-7 on the season with a 2.88 ERA and 1.03 WHIP, and his late-season surge could get him on his fair share of Cy Young Award ballots this offseason.