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Every story has a hero: Who best embodies 2019's likely division winners?

Photo illustration by Nick Roy / theScore

A baseball season is, at its core, a collection of 30 intertwined stories. Many are tragedies. Some are comedies. A couple might be epics.

And at the heart of any good story is a compelling hero; a central figure who embodies the drama. There's no "To Kill a Mockingbird" without Atticus Finch. There's no "Game of Thrones" without Jon Snow. There's no 2001 Seattle Mariners without Ichiro, you know?

So, with all but one of the division races effectively locked up, let's identify which player best embodied the drama in 2019 for his presumably playoff-bound club. (Note: Probability of winning the division from FanGraphs.)

New York Yankees - Giovanny Urshela

Record Run differential Div. lead Div. prob.
94-50 +169 8.5 games 99.9%
Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox / Getty Images

No player better personifies the Yankees' utter invulnerability to any and every seemingly catastrophic development in 2019 - and there have been many - than Urshela, the journeyman third baseman who spent his summer doing a pretty convincing Alex Rodriguez impersonation.

Everything, it seemed, had conspired to sink the Yankees' playoff hopes. New York has lost (by far) the most players and cumulative days to injury of any team, with Luis Severino, Dellin Betances, Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, and Aaron Hicks each missing considerable time (if not the entire year). Yet the Yankees have still managed their best season, by winning percentage, since their halcyon days of 1998. How'd that happen?

Well, largely because they've had multiple depth pieces, like Urshela, turn into bona fide studs, making the absences from a decimated-but-still-good roster virtually unnoticeable. Mike Tauchman, the 28-year-old outfielder acquired from Colorado a week before Opening Day, has accrued more WAR than Charlie Blackmon. Domingo German, who arrived at spring training without a guaranteed starting job, has been more valuable than more heralded rookie Chris Paddack. DJ LeMahieu was one of the worst qualified hitters in the majors last year, for goodness sake, and he'll probably get some down-ballot American League MVP votes.

Still, none of New York's improbable superstars encapsulate just how magical this season has been as potently as Urshela, who'd produced a measly .589 OPS through 167 big-league games when he made his Yankees debut on April 6. This season, he's recorded a .553 slugging percentage while producing a team-leading OPS of .922.

Los Angeles Dodgers - Cody Bellinger

Record Run differential Div. lead Div. prob.
93-52 +233 17 games 100%
Harry How / Getty Images

Bellinger, the National League MVP co-favorite, has been a veritable force since Opening Day, which makes him the perfect exemplar for the Dodgers' charmed season. For five months now, the 23-year-old's outsized success has mirrored that of his club: Just as Bellinger is enjoying the finest campaign by a Dodgers position player since Matt Kemp in 2011, the reigning National League champions are producing the franchise's best season of the decade, all but locking up a seventh straight division title before the end of May. Bellinger is unstoppable, and so is his team, which boasts a better regular-season run differential than the Boston Red Sox did last year en route to their World Series championship.

Houston Astros - Justin Verlander

Record Run differential Div. lead Div. prob.
94-50 +240 9.5 games 100%
Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images

Despite losing several key arms to free agency, the Astros and their venerated ace came into this season with lofty expectations. Houston set a franchise record last year with 103 wins before falling in the American League Championship Series, and Verlander, at 35, enjoyed one of the finest campaigns of his illustrious career, fashioning a 2.52 ERA with a 0.90 WHIP over 214 innings.

Both have delivered - and then some - in 2019, with Verlander's unrelenting, indubitable dominance serving as a fitting analog for his team's success. The Astros, boasting one of the best offenses of the live-ball era, are poised to finish 106-56, setting another franchise wins record. Verlander has similarly outdone himself, leading the AL in park-adjusted ERA (57 ERA-), WHIP (0.77), and opponents' batting average (.166) while recently adding a third career no-hitter to his resume.

Atlanta Braves - Freddie Freeman

Record Run differential Div. lead Div. prob.
89-55 +97 9 games 99.5%
Scott Cunningham / Getty Images

Thanks to the transformative offseasons orchestrated by the Phillies and Mets, too many (myself included) slept on the Braves this winter, even in the wake of a division title, and notwithstanding the impressive core of young talent assembled in Atlanta.

Being widely and unjustly overlooked has also been a recurring theme for Freeman, who's quietly been more valuable since 2013 than every position player in the game except Mike Trout, Josh Donaldson, Buster Posey, Mookie Betts, Paul Goldschmidt, and Christian Yelich. This year, Freeman has continued to excel quietly with another almost-1.000 OPS campaign, just as the Braves have pummeled their way to a second straight NL East title while the baseball world has been preoccupied with Bryce Harper's exploits in Philadelphia and the latest meltdown in Queens.

Atlanta's consistency this season, moreover, is highly evocative of Freeman, who hasn't put up an OPS+ lower than 132 since 2012. Since losing all three of their March games, the Braves haven't gone a month with a winning percentage lower than .538.

Minnesota Twins - Max Kepler

Record Run differential Div. lead Div. prob.
88-55 +168 5.5 games 97.8%
Hannah Foslien / Getty Images

Following a savvy, opportunistic offseason, the Twins entered 2019 with modest expectations - a wild-card berth seemed like the best-case scenario after a 78-84 record last year - but with just enough upside on their roster to hope for more.

The same could be said of Kepler, a 26-year-old outfielder - and a highly touted prospect in the not-too-distant past - who hadn't really distinguished himself through his first three full MLB seasons. However, his complement of tools suggested he was capable of being more than a league-average player.

As it turns out, he was. Kepler, armed with an increasingly pull-happy swing, has exploded at the plate in 2019, setting new career bests in OPS (.860), wRC+ (123), isolated power (.270), and homers (36), making him the perfect exemplar for the Twins, who've all but locked up their first division title since 2010 thanks to a remarkably potent offense. Minnesota leads the majors in runs per game (5.83) and broke the record for total homers in a season on the last day of August.

St. Louis Cardinals - Kolten Wong

Record Run differential Div. lead Div. prob.
81-62 +85 4.5 games 79.8%
Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images

Through the first three-plus months of 2019, the Cardinals - who invested heavily in the offseason after missing the playoffs three years in a row - looked decidedly mediocre. Bereft of any standout performers, they stumbled into the All-Star break with a .500 record and an equally dispiriting run differential.

But the Cardinals have been an entirely different team since then, thrusting themselves back into the playoff picture with a 37-18 second half. Nobody on the roster has embodied this tale of two seasons better than Wong. Through his first 86 games, the 28-year-old second baseman put up a characteristically meh .244/.327/.376 slash line (albeit damningly racking up more WAR than teammates Paul Goldschmidt, Matt Carpenter, and Yadier Molina). In the next 52 contests, Wong's produced a whopping .358/.432/.512 line, outperforming the likes of Yelich, Bellinger, and Ronald Acuna Jr. in the second half. His performance is emblematic: no team has won more of its games since the All-Star break than St. Louis.

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.

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