We are now into the dog days of summer. The trade deadline has passed and we're still a few weeks away from the pennant races really heating up down the stretch in September. The day in, day out grind of baseball never feels quite as much of a, well, as much of a grind as it does in August.

These next few weeks will not only decide division and postseason races. They'll also decide the major awards races. Some of those, the two Rookies of the Year in particular, have pretty clear favorites. Many races do not. So, in the weeks ahead, we'll provide a snapshot of the various awards races. In this post, we'll tackle the AL Manager of the Year.

Some housekeeping: Our awards watch posts do not reflect how we would vote on our hypothetical ballots. These are essentially a prediction of how the voting will shake out given the history of the BBWAA voting bodies. Everyone has their own voting system, though there are definitely some easy-to-identify trends.

Let's get to AL Manager of the Year race.

The favorite

A.J. Hinch, Houston Astros

The Astros have been, far and away, the best team in the AL this season. Going into Wednesday they had eight fewer losses than any other team and when a team dominates that much, the manager is usually rewarded with plenty of Manager of the Year votes.

Also, the Stros have faced some adversity. Dallas Keuchel, Lance McCullers Jr., Carlos Correa and George Springer have all spent time on the disabled list, yet the club still has the league's best record by a large margin. Manager of the Year voters love adversity. Overcoming those injuries to play this well makes Hinch, the 2015 runner-up, the obvious favorite this year.

The other division leaders

John Farrell, Boston Red Sox
Terry Francona, Cleveland Indians

Both the Red Sox and Indians came into the season favored to win their divisions, and while neither has dominated as expected, they are starting to create some distance in the standings. Managers of the division winners are always Manager of the Year candidates, though I think you could argue Farrell's and Francona's teams have underperformed this year, which won't get them much support.

Wild-card hopefuls

The Manager of the Year has morphed into the "Manager of the Team that Most Exceeded Expectations" award over the past few seasons. After all, how can you properly evaluate a manager? All we do is project player performance onto the manager, and if the players perform better than expected, well, then it must be the manager.

The AL wild-card race is very tight right now and it figures to remain that way the rest of the season. And pretty much every team in that race is overachieving, meaning the manager of a team that sneaks into the final wild-card spot could claim the Manager of the Year award.

Consider the candidates:

Buck Showalter, Baltimore Orioles

At one point the O's went 18-36 during a 54-game stretch -- that's exactly one-third of the season -- yet they've played much better in the second half and have hovered around .500-ish lately. They've come a long way since that miserable 18-36 stretch.

Ned Yost, Kansas City Royals

Remember how terrible the Royals were in April? They went 7-16 in the season's first month. They have the league's third-best record since that date at 50-39, however, and now they're right in the wild-card mix. Keep in mind this is the last ride for their core. Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain, Jason Vargas and Alcides Escobar are all going to be free agents after the season.

Mike Scioscia, Los Angeles Angels

Amazingly, the Angels managed to go 19-20 with Mike Trout on the disabled list. That isn't great by any means, but they didn't completely go in the tank either, which is what more than a few pundits believed would happen (myself included). The Halos have played very well of late thanks in part to having a healthy Trout.

Paul Molitor, Minnesota Twins

The Twins are fading -- they have the league's third-worst record at 16-22 since June 25 -- though basically no one expected them to hang around the postseason race this long. They're rebuilding and figured to be positioning themselves for a trade deadline fire sale and a top draft pick in 2018. Instead, they're hanging around the wild-card race.

Joe Girardi, New York Yankees

Some rebuilding season for the Yankees, huh? They traded away several productive veterans at last year's trade deadline, plugged a bunch of young players into their lineup this year and now they're right back in the postseason race. Their rebuild lasted a year. This was supposed to down year before the coming out party in 2018.

Scott Servais, Seattle Mariners

It boils down to this: The Mariners have baseball's longest postseason drought -- they haven't played October baseball since Ichiro Suzuki's rookie season in 2001 -- and if they make the playoffs this year, Servais will win Manager of the Year. Seattle very quietly has the AL's best record at 16-9 in its past 25 games.

Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay Rays

The Rays have struggled a little bit of late, though they're still in the race despite their shoestring budget, mostly because their offense has been so great. We're used to Tampa Bay getting dominant pitching. This year the Rays are smacking the ball out of the park.

As it stands, Hinch seems to be the Manager of the Year favorite. The wild-card race could very well change things. If a team makes a big comeback to win a postseason spot, that manager figures to get a lot of love. Voters love an underdog. A team that overcomes long odds to sneak into the postseason is likely to see its manager rewarded with the Manager of the Year award.