Matt Cain is giving up bombs, Ryan Howard is wilting in the clutch, James Shields has little to show for his efforts and the consistent Joey Votto just keeps hitting. Here’s this week’s Amazing Stats for May 13-19.

2    Games Braves played with best lineup

Each week during the baseball season Athlon Sports looks at the best (Texas Rangers) and worst (Houston Astros) baseball teams and players in the league. Here's our MLB Power Rankings and Players of the Week.

  1. Rangers—Texas survived first blown save and three HRs by Miggy.

Each week during the 2013 MLB season, we highlight the most important, intriguing and bizarre stats in baseball. 

Now that baseball is back in full swing, we started thinking about the future. And there’s nothing more fun than projecting where today’s baseball stars will be playing three years from now, and predicting who the best players in each league will be. So here goes. The 2016 All-Star teams.

The San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers—both of these franchises have been in business for more than 100 years, but the two tradition-laden clubs have never met in the World Series. Detroit has won 11 American League pennants, winning the World Series four times. The Tigers last won the Series in 1984 and lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006. Since 1900, the Giants have 19 pennants, appearing the World Series 18 times, winning six, the most recent coming just two years ago when they defeated the Texas Rangers in 2010.

On Sept. 17, the Tigers lost a make-up game to the White Sox that dropped Detroit three games behind Chicago in the American League Central and not even in the wild card discussion. The Tigers finished 11-5 and flipped the standings ending the season with a three-game lead over Chicago. During that time, the Tigers’ starting pitching found a groove.

A
A’s
A’s, as in the Oakland Athletics, are in a pennant race for the first time since 2006. We have the second wild card to thank for this, but the no-name A’s have been the hottest team since July 1. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when you assemble a competent pitching staff.

AL Central
1. Detroit
2. Cleveland
3. Kansas City
4. Minnesota
5. Chicago

From the pages of Athlon Sports Monthly, here are five major storylines for the 2012 baseball season , as well as our predictions.