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 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.
Labels: Alfonso Soriano, Brewers, Cubs, leadoff hitters, Phillies, Playoffs, right hand dominant lineup, Tampa Bay, White Sox
posted by Andrew Manning at
6:22 PM
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