As we hit the halfway mark in August and continue on toward September, two teams have emerged as the favorites in each league. In the American league the Anaheim Angels are clearly the best team and in the National league the Chicago Cubs are the best team (so far).

But, while they are the best teams in each of thier leagues, they are much different when it comes to their chances of making the playoffs. Oh, they are both going to make the playoffs, but the Angels have it wrapped up while the Cubs are still in a battle for the National league Central.

Here it is August and the Angels have opened-up a whopping 15.5 game lead already. This probably could’ve been predicted when the 2nd place Oakland A’s decided to trade away their pitching. What motivation do they have to play well? None. And that’s apparent with them losing almost every night. Now the A’s are in 3rd place the the Texas Rangers sit in 2nd place. Though it doesn’t matter because they won’t catch the Angels.

But in the NL Central, the 2nd place Milwaukee Brewers will not go away. Yes, they lost on Thursday but that snapped an 8 game winning streak. So, although the Cubs have been playing great baseball for more than 3 months, they still are only 4.5 games ahead of the Brewers. It’s a comfortable lead (and I believe it’s plenty) but it’s not enough for the Cubs to relax.

All in all, it might be the Angels who have it worse though. They can shut things down now until October, and then they’ll be asked to play hard to advance in the playoffs. That might be too tough to do, we’ll see. It’s really the only hope the rest of the American league has, that the Angels will falter. Because if the Angels play like they can then they will advance all the way to the World Series. And they may very well met the Cubs there.