Playoff Baseball

Okay, with playoff baseball starting today (including games at 1pm and 4pm! Get your Alt-Tab fingers ready!), let's take a quick break from football talk and see what's up. So let's answer some top questions…

Can the Red Sox and Yankees actually advance past the first round? As exciting as it might be to see another Boston vs. New York ALCS, I don't see it happening. The pitching for both teams is just too shaky for a 5-game series. I'll address this a bit more further down.

Will Atlanta continue their decade long pattern of making the playoffs, but going out with a fizzle?
What the hell is wrong with the Braves? They ALWAYS win their division. And ALWAYS lose. Okay, so they've won one World Series over this current one, so not really _always_, but close enough. Says here the pattern continues. And unless someone else besides Andruw Jones decides to get hot with the bat, they might not even put up much of a fight in the first round.

Can the Cardinals live up to their expectations, especially after being swept in the World Series last yeat?
I doubt it. Although the rest of the NL isn't exactly scary. They're arguably worse than last year, with no Scott Rolen, Larry Walker needing cortizone shots into his frickin spine to be able to play, and their starting pitching besides Cy Young candidate Chris Carpenter not exactly intimidating.

Okay, so who's going to win what?
It's been said time and time and time again that pitching wins championships. Can you think of a recent an example where the offense won the World Series for a team in a high scoring series? Me neither. Good pitching wins. Based upon that logic (and it's hard to argue with it), a lot of "experts" are picking the Astros to win it all. The Astros?!? You mean the team that barely won the wild card?!? Yes, those Astros. And here's three reasons why: Clemens, Pettite, and Oswalt. I don't think you'll find a better top 3 starters in the playoffs. The Astros probably would have challenged for the division had Oswalt and Pettitte both been on the DL for a decent amount of time. And Clemens got like NO run support for many of his starts.

We all know how much I hate the "experts". So I'm going to say while the Astros pitching is impressive, their offense is not. It's tough to see them putting up even the 3-4 runs needed to win playoff games against other teams' top pitchers.

As for the AL… we all know about the woes of the Red Sox and Yankees pitching. But here's the key difference - Randy Johnson has pitched well in September (including a HUGE win against the Sox last weekend, when the home plate umpire was giving him a real tough time on close pitches). Curt Schilling has not pitched well, and is still of questionable health. Hell, it looks like he's not even going to pitch until Game 4 (if it gets that far). What does that tell you about the team's faith in him?

Despite their pitching woes, they're not exactly going up against amazing pitching staffs with the Angels and White Sox. Basically, it'll be the Yankees and Red Sox high-powered offenses against pretty good pitching of the Angels and White Sox. Versus the pretty good offenses of the Angels and White Sox against the not-quite-as-good pitching of New York and Boston. Confused yet? Me too.

I'll just shut up now and pull some actual predictions out of my ass:

ALDS:
White Sox over Red Sox in 4. (With Schilling getting destroyed at home to lose the series).
Yankees over Angels in 5. (Dude! A-Rod! Time to him to earn some of that salary in the post-season.)

NLDS:
Astros over Braves in 4. (Could Pettitte win both games 1 and 4? Why not.)
Cardinals over Padres in 5. (Just because the Cardinals like to give themselves a scare.)

And what the hell, I'll go all the way. Though I deserve the right to revise the rest of these predictions after round 1 is over:

ALCS:
Yankees over White Sox in 6. (Ozzie Guillen just is not a championship caliber coach, and it catches up with him.)

NLCS:
Cardinals over Astros in 7. (The makings of a classic series. Houston offense doesn't get it done.)

World Series:
Cardinals over Yankees in 6. (Cardinals put it all together for the win. Series MVP: Albert Pujols. The kid is dope.)

We'll revisit this later, no doubt. ;) And Samichlaus has promised a piece, including some good ol' fashioned Yankee bashing, so stay tuned!