ALCS Preview

The defending champion Red Sox take on the upstart Rays in a match up of probably the two best teams in baseball. Who will win? Well, lets see how they match up.

Starting pitching:

The Sox will go Matsuzaka, Beckett, Lester, and Wakefield while the Rays will go Shields, Kazmir, Garza, and Sonnanstine.

The Red Sox are clearly better, but how much better will depend on which Beckett shows up. Will it be the Beckett from the division series because if so, the Rays will have a very good chance in games 2 and 6 with their wild card Scott Kazmir pitching. If it is the Beckett from 2003 or 2007, this series is over and it has yet to begin.

Advantage: Red Sox.

Lineup:

The Rays are solid with Iwamura, Crawford, Pena, Navaro, and budding superstars Longoria and Upton. Their holes are at short and possibly rightfield. They also run into trouble against pitchers of the lefthanded persuasion. The Sox counter with 4 very good hitters: Bay, Youk, Ortiz, and Pedroia. The Sox have decent to good hitters in Elsbury, Lowrie, and Drew with the Lowell replacement and Varitek being the holes. They are less suseptable to lefties.

Advantage: Push. The Sox are better on paper, but the Rays have been performing in the playoffs and have some huge talents.

Bullpen:

This is a tough one because the Rays bullpen is deeper, but Papelbon is unquestionably the best reliever in baseball. The Rays can bring Howell, Balfour, Price, and Miller, and that's better than Masterson/Delcarmen/Lopez/Iwojima/Whoever, but it's not enough better to cancel out Papelbon vs. Wheeler which isn't close.

Advantge: Red Sox

Bench/Defense/Management/Intangibles
The benches are pretty equal with Lowell's injury possibly tilting the edge to the Rays. The defenses are both excellent, but again the Rays get a bit of an edge. Ditto on the managers. The Sox hold the edge in the intangibles with a variety of playoff warriors.

Advantge: Rays.

Prediction: Sox in 7. I've gone over it a bunch of times and I don't see how they can beat the Sox 4 out of 7. They will have to beat Dice-K twice, Wake once, and either Beckett or Lester once. I see almost no way they can beat Lester since their lineup is severly weakend by a lefty. Lester is also going agaist the erratic Garza. I don't see them beating Dice-K twice, nor do I see them beating Beckett twice. I'll give them the Wakefield game and one against both Dice-K and Beckett, but they fall to series MVP Lester in 7.

NLCS Preview

The upstart Dodgers face the perennially disappointing Phillies in a series that seems to be fairly evenly matched. The winner will probably get beat in the World Series as the AL seems vastly superior to the NL this year, but as the 2006 Cardinals showed, anything can happen in a playoff series.

Starting Pitching:
The Dodgers will send Lowe, Billingsley, Kuroda, and either Maddux, Kershaw or Lowe 3 times instead of 2. The Phillies will counter with Hamels, Meyers, Moyer, and Blanton.

A month ago, Hamels would have a clear advantage over Lowe, but Lowe has been almost unbeatable since. Hamels is still excellent, the 4th best pitcher in the NL this year, but Lowe has pitched so well (0.59 ERA in September), that he negates any advantage Hamels may have had. The rest of the rotation vastly favors LA with Billingsley, Kuroda and Maddux all being clearly better than their Phillie counterpart. I'd go Lowe in 1-4-7 and have Maddux or Kershaw ready if he falters.

Advantage: Dodgers.

Lineup
Another area where earlier in the season, the Phils would have had a clear advantage. But that was before LA added Manny, brought back Furcal, got rid of Andruw Jones, and sat Juan Pierre. Now, they are at least as good as the Phillies, if not better. They have six solid hitters in Furcal, Martin, Eithier, Manny, Kemp, and Loney. Blake and Dewitt are not as good, but they're not automatic outs either. The same cannot be said for the two black holes in the Phillies lineup. Ruiz/Coste and Feliz are sorry excuses for major league hitters, Feliz especially since he plays a coner position.

Advantage: Dodgers. I'll take Manny over Howard, Eithier over Utley, Furcal over Rollins, Martin over Victorino, and Blake/Dewitt over catcher/Feliz. That gives the Phillies the advatage with Werth and Burrell only. That is not enough.

Bullpen.
An area where the Phillies thrive and could make up the difference with the Dodgers. Problem is the Dodgers have a good pen too. You're looking at Bemiel, Broxton, Wade, Park, Kuo, and Maddux/Kershaw for the Dodgers even without their closer. The Phillies counter with Lidge, Romero, Durbin, Madsen, Eyre, and Condrey. That's 6 solid guys for each team. Lidge is probably a bit better closer than Broxton, but the Phillies don't have the long guys that the Dodgers have.

Advantage: I'm calling a PUSH in an area the Phillies really need.

Bench/Defense/Management/Intagibles
The Dodgers bench is experiences with Nomar, Pierre, and the Dr. but not deep. The Phillies bench is about the same minus the experience. Neither defense is anything to write home about, but the Phillies is slighly better. Torre is certainly the manager of choice over Manual. And the Dodgers have the edge in the intangibles with Manny, Maddux and Lowe. They also have world Champion Juan Pierre. Howard is vastly overrated, and Lidge looked shaky as hell in that last series.

Prediction: Dodgers in 6. I see at least 1 win for each of the 3 Dodger starters. Hamels will steal one and Meyers probably will as well. The Dodgers will beat the piss out of Blanton and Moyer and possibly end this in 4 or 5.

Red Sox - Angels Series

I'm going to try to keep this from being a rant against the Angels, but it could turn into that, so consider yourself warned.

Angels ace John Lackey said after the series that the Angels were the better team and that the Red Sox won the series on a series of flukes. Well John, you're wrong and I just lost a lot of respect for you. You were outpitched by Jon Lester not once, but twice. If not for some poor management in the 8th by the Red Sox, you would have been hung with two losses in the series.

The Red Sox were crippled coming in with two of their best hitters hurting, and the best active postseason pitcher a little on the injured side. But despite that, and the fact that many of their stars did not even play well, they still won. They won because they performed in high pressure situations, they pitched better, they excecuted better on the basepaths, and they played much better defense. The funny thing about this is that the Angels are praised for always doing these things.

I don't want to hear anymore about how the Angels play the game the right way and how great Garret Anderson, GMJ, Howie Kendrick, and Erick Aybar are. The Angels coninually blew plays in the field, and made bonehead moves on the bases. The biggest example of course being the squeeze play they blew their would be rally in the 8th inning. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!!! I understand that Willits is a great baserunner, all the more reason that he would have scored on a single, sac fly, or grounder. Aybar is not a very good hitter, but he doesn't strikout very much and might have been able to drive in a run by putting it in play. Even if he didn't they would still have Figgins with a chance to drive in the run with a single. Here's the other thing: they tried to bunt against a wild pitcher who was throwing nothing by mid 90s gas. Its hard to bunt such a pitch well, you bring the double play into play, and you completely negate a chance at a walk that could lead to more than a 1 run rally. In short, it was a bad move, but Aybar should not have been hitting anyway. The only reason this series was even close was the outstanding play of Mike Napoli and Mark Teixeira. They combined for 7 of the teams 13 runs, drove in 5, and hit two homers, without them, this surely would have been a sweep.

The Red Sox however, were not without questioning. In the 8th inning Angels rally, the Angels had their 4 best hitters come to the plate with the Sox leading 2-0. The Sox only had to keep the Angels from scoring twice in two innings. When Okajima walked Teixeira with two outs, the Red Sox should have brought in Papelbon to get Guerrero out. Stop the rally before it starts and worry about the 9th when you get there. Yes, Papelbon had throw 32 pitches the day before, but he insists he was ready, always wants the ball, and has electric stuff that would blow Guerrero and or Hunter away. Get him in when you need him most, crush the rally, and deal with the 9th when you get there. Who knows? Maybe the Sox would score a bunch in the 9th and blow it open. The point is that you get through the best hitters on the team and use a lesser reliever to get through the bottom of the order in the 9th. But thats not how we do things in today's game. It makes no sense, but Francona never would have been second guessed for not bringing Paps in. He would however have been torn apart if he went with Paps in the 8th, and they lost in the 9th.

The Sox advanced, but another series like that, and they will be stuck at home for the fall classic.

The First Round: What the hell??? Part I

Okay, I managed to pick 3 of the 4 series correctly, but all of them had some unexpected turns, and except for the Rays vs. White Sox series, non went as I expected.

The highlight of the Rays vs. Sox series was the Balfour vs. Cabrera showdown which is the kind of thing you will remember for years. Balfour has now climbed into my favorite obscure players list. The rest of the series was pretty much chalk. The Sox managed to win one more game than I thought they would based solely on the strength of John Danks' start. That kid is really something and could turn into a Cy Young caliber pitcher in the coming years. Other than that, the Rays pitchers kept the Sox at bay and the young stars on the Rays, Upton and Longoria especially, shined brightly as they will for the next decade or so.

The most disappointing series would have to be the Cubs vs. Dodgers. This is the series I thought would be the best basically consisting of Manny vs. the Cubs pitching. Instead, it consisted of the Cubs completely laying an egg. Dempster and Harden picked a bad time to have bad starts, with Dempster completely losing his command, and Harden losing the dominance he had displayed most of this year. Looking back, Harden and Depster probably were not guys you wanted to trust to start in postseason games. Dempster does not have dominating stuff, and Harden has inconsistent command and no durability. But while these pitchers were bad, the Cubs lineup lost the series. They scored 6 runs. Unless you have Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, you will not win a playoff series in which you score 6 runs. Part of that is the fact that the Dodgers pitchers were excellent, part of that was that certain Cubs (Soriano, Ramirez, Soto) flat out choked, but mostly it was due to poor lineup construction. I said over a month ago that the fact that the Cubs did not have a superstar hitter could hurt them, and it did. Lee, the best hitter on the team, stepped up and hit over .500 in the series, but it was not enough. They made a mistake in playing the ice cold Fukodome, they made a bigger mistake in contructing a lineup whose two best left handed hitters are a 40 year old centerfielder, and their #1 starting pitcher. But the biggest mistake was giving superstar money to the extremely overrated Alfonso Soriano, and insisting on batting him leadoff despite the fact that he is completely the anti leadoff hitter.

A good leadoff hitter: has a high on base percentage, takes a good amount of walks, does not strikout much, gets a fair amount lot of extra base hits, but not a lot of homers, is a good baserunner who does not run into a lot of extra outs for the extra bases he takes. The two best leadoffmen ever, Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines, did all these things and did them well. Soriano is fast. Thats it. He strikes out way too much, does not get on base enough, and hits way too many homers to bat at the top. If the Cubs learned anything from this series, its that Soriano needs to move down, Theriot and Derosa need to move up, and they have to get more lefthaded bats.

The Brewers vs. Phillies series turned out about as expected with the somewhat large exception of CC Sabathia. Sabathia had a bad inning and two awful at bats with the Phillies star hitter: Brett Myers!!! Sabathia controlled Utley and Howard as expected and looked fairly sharp, he just could not handle the lesser hitters in the lineup. Game 5 could have been a classic if only the Brewers could have pulled it out. They also have some fixing to do. Their pitching should be fine as long as they can find one starter. If they can bring Sabathia back, that will solve a lot of the problems. The lineup, however will not be as easy to fix. Hart has to go, Weeks, and Hall could as well. They need to get a few more patient hitters because Hardy and Braun can't do it all by themselves.

Sox-Angels needs its own entry. coming soon.

The Best Postseason Pitchers of all time

Now were in the playoffs lets do a top 5 October Edition. Mo Rivera has the best postseason numbers of all pitchers, but we are going to focus entirely on starters here. Basically, if you could build a rotation of playoff studs, who would it be? All based on having to win one game.

The requirements:
1. Must have at least 50 innings pitched.
2. Must have pitched in and won at least 1 world series.
3. Must have been primarily a starter during said WS.
4. Must have started at least 2 WS games.

5. John Smoltz: 15-4, 2.65 ERA, 24 Postseason Series, 1 WS Ring
Smoltz has been downright nasty as both a closer and a pitcher, but his playoff career is filled with things he couldn't do. After doing enough to beat Jack Morris in game 4 of the '91 series, Smoltz went toe to toe with Morris again in game 7. The game, which is arguably the greatest game 7 ever in any sport, was a shutout of 9 innings. Smoltz threw 7 of those and pitched very well. Morris threw 10 and won 1-0. Morris did not have Smoltz's career numbers, but he had 3 rings and in 1991, he was certainly the best. Smoltz also got a tough luck loss in game 5 of the 1996 WS where he went 8, gave up 0 earned runs, struck out 10 and lost 1-0 despite outpitching Andy Pettitte thanks to a Marquis Grissom error. Strangely, Smoltz's worst playoff series was the 1995 World Series, which is the only one the Braves won.

4. Josh Beckett: 6-2, 1.73 ERA, 6 Postseason Series, 2 WS Rings
Okay, this may be a bit premature, but Beckett's postseason record speaks for itself: 2 postseasons, 2 rings, 2 postseason MVP awards, 2 world series his teams certainly would not have won without him. Heck, he's only had one bad outing in the playoffs! Game 1 of the Bartman series. We'll see if he can do it again in 2008.

3. Christey Matthewson: 5-5, 0.97 ERA, 4 WS, 1 WS Ring
Matthewson pitched the single greatest world series performance ever. Even better than Don Larsen's perfect game. Matty in the 1905 series threw 3 games, 3 wins, 3 shutouts. 27 innings, no runs. No one is that good. Matty never won another ring, but he pitched very well in 3 additional world series allowing just 11 earned runs in 74.2 more innings. Possibly the best pitcher ever too.

2. Sandy Koufax: 4-3, 0.95 ERA, 4 WS, 3 Rings
At his peak, no one was better than Sandy. In '63 and '65, Koufax was 4-1 and allowed 4 earned runs in 42 innings. How he lost that game is beyond me. The Dodgers however, won both series. They failed wo make it in '64, and in '66, Koufax and Drysdale were not enough to compensate for the fact that the Dodgers scored TWO RUNS in a 4 game sweep by the O's.

1. Curt Schilling: 11-2, 2.23 ERA, 12 Postseason series, 3 Rings
Schilling was great in the regular season, but absolutely phenomenal in the playoffs. He pitched in 12 series, his teams only lost two: the 1993 World Series, and the 2002 NLDS. Had it not been for Joe Carter that number might be only one as Schilling pitched an incredible game 5 147 pitch shutout to save an exhausted bullpen and extend the series. The Phils were in position to force a game 7 with Wild Thing Williams on the hill in the 9th, but we all know how that ended.

Schilling only lost 2 playoff games and only had 3 bad starts out of 19. His first loss was his first ever World Series start in 1993 when he was 26, his second was game 1 of the 2004 ALCS when he injured his ankle. His 3rd bad start was in the 2007 ALCS against Cleveland. In each case, he rebounded to dominate in his next outing. He went 1-4-7 in the 2001 Series against the Yankee dynasty, allowing 4 runs in 21 innings. He dominated all 3 games winning game 1, was in line for the win in game 4, and kept the Snakes close enough for the heroic comeback in game 7.

Honorable mention:

Bob Gibson: Excelled in 3 WS (2 wins) starting 1-4-7 in all of them and going 9 innings in all of them. He beat 31 game winning Denny McLain to win 1-4 of the 1968 WS, but McLain came back on 2 days rest in game 6 to force game 7 and Mickey Lolich and the Tigers finally beat Gibby.

Jack Morris: Great in the 1984, and 1991 playoff runs, not so much in his other 2 trips to the playoffs. Won 3 rings, pitching 2 excellent CGs in 1984, and the incredible 10 inning shutout in game 7 of the 1991 series to win the series MVP.

Randy Johnson: Not a great postseason career, but was 31 when he got there for the first time (oldest of anyone mentioned here). And his 2001 playoff run was better than anyone else's even Schilling and Beckett. Winning 5 games in the last 2 series including 2, 6, and 7 in relief of Schilling in the world series for his only ring.