Sunday, October 10, 2010

Some Comments on Baseball

Sorry for completely dissapearing from the face of the Earth for a while. Between moving, starting graduate school, having a broken computer, and no cable, I haven't had an extreme amount of free time. However, I think I've gotten to where I can manage my time more effectively and I will have the time to update this a little more regularly. Granted, heading into the offseason there probably won't be as much to talk about, aside from trade rumors.

Anyway, on to baseball.

The playoffs have been interesting, although the first few series have looked like kind of bad match-ups, but that's baseball for you.

The Yankees swept the Twins again, and will be playing either the Rangers or the Rays in the ALCS.

I think it's fairly likely that the Rangers manage to win that series, because even if the Rays get it back to Tropicana Field, that means they will be seeing Cliff Lee again, who seems to have it really dialed up this post-season, just like he did last year. The Rangers also have the confidence of knowing that they won the first two games in St. Petersburg without any problem, so playing game five there should not intimidate them, if it comes to that.

The Phillies seem to be on the verge of sweeping the Reds, whose pitching phenom let them down in game two, and who were the victims of the second no-hitter in post-season history in game one. The pitching match-up tonight doesn't seem to favor the Reds at all.

The Braves and Giants series is an interesting one, as both teams have pretty good pitching with pretty average offenses. Unfortunatley, the Braves may have lost their closer for the rest of the series, which does not exactly bode well for them. Regardless, the Braves Giants series is probably the most evenly matched of the opening series, and I could see it going the full exciting 5 games.

Additionally, I thought it would be interesting to look back at my pre-season predictions about who would make it into the playoffs this year.

In the AL I managed to get two of four correct. I had the Yankees winning the AL East and the Red Sox winning the Wild Card. Obviously the Red Sox's massive number of injuries prevented this, and the Rays surprising 96-win season despite their offense horribly underachieving did as well.

I also got two of four in the AL East correct, predicting the Phillies winning the NL East and the Braves winning the Wild Card. I predicted the Rockies winning the NL West and the Cardinals winning the NL Central. Obviously I got both of those pretty wrong. The Rockies were contendors until September, but never really threatened the Padres or Giants. The Cardinals stumbled late in the season and only managed to finish a few games over .500.

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