By John Klima
Staff Writer

September is the time of reckoning. The last four weeks of the season will determine the efforts of the previous five months. There is no such thing as a division secured in the first week of September, except in very rare circumstances, but this is not one of those years. There is again a race in every division, and each division has a player who can be pointed to as having the single greatest influence on that race.

Call this, then, the September six pack, the six most important players in the final month of the regular season.

You don’t have to stray far from home to find the first player.

The Angels have a 6 1/2 lead, but you can’t call the division finished yet. Seattle has to stay close enough to the Angels to make a four-game series September 20-23 at Anaheim meaningful. This is the Angels’ division to lose, which means that the surest way for them to avoid a catastrophe is to fall into one of their dreaded prolonged offensive slumps. That means that Vladimir Guerrero is the obvious choice as this division’s most important player in the final month of the season.

Guerrero has single-handedly carried the Angels to the playoffs before, but he might not have to do it alone this month if the Angels play even decent baseball. Guerrero, who must be in the discussion for the AL Most Valuable Player award no matter how many home runs Alex Rodriguez hits, is a lifetime .329 hitter with 56 home runs and 155 RBIs in 910 September at-bats entering this season.

Guerrero is exactly what is lacking in the National League West. You can’t find an impact bat in this division, the kind of throw-the-team-on-his shoulders soldier, and Colorado can’t count because the pitching isn’t there to get them into position.

Perhaps Jeff Kent, who has always been solid down the stretch, will continue to emerge. Perhaps Russell Martin, who hit .258 with 13 RBIs last September, will push home a few more runs. But more than likely – unless you expect Milton Bradley to continue hitting .340 – the most influential player will be one of three staff aces of the Diamondbacks, Padres and Dodgers.

In a closer inspection of how the rotations line up, Brad Penny (14-4, 2.88, 122 strikeouts) has to be considered the most important guy because he’s currently lined up for six starts, one more than Brandon Webb (14-4, 2.88, 170 strikeouts) and Chris Young (9-4, 2.14). He is also the most important because the Dodgers have less rotation depth than Arizona and San Diego.

Penny is also lined up for 20 victories if he’s good. He has the Cubs in his next start and would have the first game of the Arizona series at home. Penny would also have two starts against Colorado, a lineup that nobody really wants to face, including one start in Colorado. He would then be aligned to have the ball on the last day of the season at home against the Giants.

Webb should be lined up for five more starts, including two against the Dodgers and one each against the Rockies and Padres. Young (9-4, 2.14), who missed a month, is booked for five more starts, four of them in the division. He has the Padres, Dodgers and Diamondbacks once each. But Penny is the most prevalent based on his schedule, which means he can affect the race. That makes his start against the Cubs important because Webb and Young would make each of their remaining starts within the division.

The NL Central is another division where a starting pitcher can have the most influence on the race. The Brewers’ feel-good story is over. They must grow up in September if they want to win this year. Right-hander Ben Sheets (11-4, 3.30) has to be considered the key factor. Sheets, who came off the disabled list this week because of a sprained right finger suffered in mid-July, needs to find the form he had in June when he went 5-0 with a 2.16 ERA. His victory against the Cubs Wednesday was his first since he beat the Cubs on June 30.

Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano went 0-4 with a 7.06 ERA in August and has six scheduled starts remaining, but only one, against Penny and the Dodgers on Wednesday, is against a winning team. That makes what Sheets must go through more valuable.

The Brewers, trying to finish off their first winning season in 15 years, might be too young of a team to pull this off. They are a great home team, but in one of the surest signs that a team is vulnerable to distraction is a poor road record. That’s why Sheets is so important. He and Geoff Jenkins are the proven veterans. Sheets is set up to face Houston, Cincinnati on consecutive starts, then Atlanta, the Cardinals and the Padres. The Brewers are patching their pitching staff and could fall out of it if Sheets doesn’t eat up innings.

Ryan Howard of the Phillies, who ate up the Mets in a three-game sweep this week that trimmed their lead to two games in the NL East, is the man in his division. Howard’s the truest power bat in that division, and he’s got protection with Pat Burrell in front and Aaron Rowland behind. Howard, who is already the fastest player to 100 career home runs in big league history (325 games), went 7-for-14 with two home runs against the Mets. He hit a game-winning home run in the 10th inning in the first game of the series. Howard has been productive on a Guerrero-like scale. He drove in four runs against the Mets to drive his total to 87, the most in the majors after May 25, when he came off the disabled list. The Mets and the Phillies still have a three-game series in New York in mid-September.

Howard has already proven to be a man in September. He brings a career .320 average with 21 home runs and 46 RBIs in 228 lifetime at-bats into this stretch drive, like a younger model of Gary Sheffield.

Sheffield’s sore shoulder in the AL Central will make the stretch drive for the Tigers much more difficult. This has to be one injury that even Jim Leyland may not be able to overcome. Leyland made due with a banged-up Sheffield during the season, patched his bullpen together, but has had pieces of his defending AL champions fall apart. Now there are reports of dwindling velocity for starters Justin Verlander and Jeremy Bonderman and a bullpen thinning out.

This leaves the pressure squarely on Magglio Ordonez. He’s having an MVP season, but the Tigers must mash their way through Oakland, Chicago, Seattle, Toronto and Minnesota in order to make their three-game series at Cleveland on Sep. 17 meaningful.

The Yankees are not used to playing meaningless AL East games in September, but the question now becomes if the ultimate September spackle, Roger Clemens, can anchor what is suddenly a much younger pitching staff. Mike Mussina has been tossed out of the rotation in favor of rookie Ian Kennedy. You know what to expect from Chein Ming-Wang (16-6, 3.79).

This is why they bought Clemens (6-5, 4.14), not to be a back-end starter, but to be a big-game hunter when it matters most. His strikeouts are down (62), but he still doesn’t walk hitters (27 in 89 innings). They’ll get offense even if Rodriguez doesn’t carry them, but the Yankees need Clemens to not fold up in his final five scheduled starts, the third of which should fall at Fenway Park.

Guerrero, Penny, Sheets, Howard, Ordonez and Clemens – you could start a pretty good team with those six players. Or you could lose.